3 ms·

You're conflating trusted computing with there being an OS-manufacturer monopoly over TCB boot keys. Trusted computing is great if you're an IT admin (or even

by derefr 5y ago

You're conflating trusted computing with there being an OS-manufacturer monopoly over TCB boot keys. Trusted computing is great if you're an IT admin (or even an "IT admin of one") and you order devices with an open/unsealed boot-key store from your hardware vendor. You can install your own boot keys on your fleet of devices, seal the boot key store, modify OS images/updates to your heart's content, and then sign those modified images with those same keys. Now only the images you've created will run on those computers. People won't even be able to install the original, unmodified OS on those machines; they'll now only ever run the version you've signed. This isn't just about employees not being able to futz with the MDM. Even the OS vendor won't be able to push updates to your managed devices without your consent. You'll truly have taken control over what code the devices will (or more importantly, won't) run. In any situation where the person intended to have physical access to the device is not the same as the owner-operator of the device, this kind of thing is essential. Obviously, public-use computers in libraries et al. But also, ATMs. Kiosks. Digital workplace control panels and dashboards. On all of those, nobody's around to monitor the hardware to ensure that someone doesn't just open the back and swap the hard drive out for their own. With TCB, swapping the hard drive out just makes the device not boot.

no_time 5y ago
>You're conflating trusted computing with there being an OS-manufacturer monopoly over TCB boot keys. Because the two go hand in hand in the wild already. Just look at all android phones. Where you have to make a pact with the devil to get your unlock keys (if possible at all) and that still doesnt give you full override capabilities and also marks your device as "tainted" so you can say goodbye to banking apps and increasingly more stuff. I'm not concerned about enterprise deployments because companies had a lot of tools to (rightfully) lock down devices given to their employees since the dawn of computing. However I am concerned about the philosophy coming over from phones to the desktop space with announcements like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25191319 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25191319
- derefr 5y ago
  You and I have very different definitions of “in the wild”, it seems. To me, “the wild” is embedded civic-infrastructure / industrial systems. This is a place where people will encounter trusted computing involuntarily. Consumer electronics — phones, game consoles, etc. — these are places where people choose to buy the dang thing in the first place, despite the restrictions the manufacturer imposes. Trusted computing isn’t the problem, it’s a tool used by an abuser against their Stockholm-syndrome victims. The abuser themselves — and society having no social norms that protect against developing this particular Stockholm-syndrome — are the problems. The stuff people want from these devices — the reason they buy into these locked-down ecosystems — is almost always just the platform-locked software that runs on them, not the distinctive hardware (that the software doesn’t usually even take advantage of!) But that fact is great for the end-user: it means that, as long as one person figures out how to defeat the platform’s software DRM, and another person figures out how to write an emulator for the hardware, then there’ll never a reason to lock yourself into these ecosystems. When software is the USP, users can just use an alternative conformant implementation of the same platform (from the software’s perspective) that isn’t locked down, to run said software.

by derefr 5y ago

no_time 5y ago

>You're conflating trusted computing with there being an OS-manufacturer monopoly over TCB boot keys. Because the two go hand in hand in the wild already. Just look at all android phones. Where you have to make a pact with the devil to get your unlock keys (if possible at all) and that still doesnt give you full override capabilities and also marks your device as "tainted" so you can say goodbye to banking apps and increasingly more stuff. I'm not concerned about enterprise deployments because companies had a lot of tools to (rightfully) lock down devices given to their employees since the dawn of computing. However I am concerned about the philosophy coming over from phones to the desktop space with announcements like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25191319 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25191319

derefr 5y ago
You and I have very different definitions of “in the wild”, it seems. To me, “the wild” is embedded civic-infrastructure / industrial systems. This is a place where people will encounter trusted computing involuntarily. Consumer electronics — phones, game consoles, etc. — these are places where people choose to buy the dang thing in the first place, despite the restrictions the manufacturer imposes. Trusted computing isn’t the problem, it’s a tool used by an abuser against their Stockholm-syndrome victims. The abuser themselves — and society having no social norms that protect against developing this particular Stockholm-syndrome — are the problems. The stuff people want from these devices — the reason they buy into these locked-down ecosystems — is almost always just the platform-locked software that runs on them, not the distinctive hardware (that the software doesn’t usually even take advantage of!) But that fact is great for the end-user: it means that, as long as one person figures out how to defeat the platform’s software DRM, and another person figures out how to write an emulator for the hardware, then there’ll never a reason to lock yourself into these ecosystems. When software is the USP, users can just use an alternative conformant implementation of the same platform (from the software’s perspective) that isn’t locked down, to run said software.