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What moral right do they have to put data on devices you own? TPMs jeopardize the ownership of a device. Consumer devices are already sold where you can't (eas

What moral right do they have to put data on devices you own? TPMs jeopardize the ownership of a device. Consumer devices are already sold where you can't (easily) inspect or change anything. Even a user-controlled TPM can be used as storage for keys used to usurp control of the device. The existence of IME and PSP enables manufacturers to have more control over computing devices than the people who buy and operate them. There is no moral defense for sabotaging ownership.

jon-wood 3y ago
I genuinely wish things were this binary. I’m a hacker (using the original definition) at heart, I want to turn random devices I own into other things, which would be so much easier if it weren’t for encrypted storage and signed boot chains. That’s all very well until you start talking about hardware that does things like providing video of the inside of someone’s home. I’m still behind being able to modify them and use them as you please, but if you do so that should be self-evident, because otherwise *someone else* can do so, and you won’t know until video appears on the internet if you walking back from the shower. TPMs don’t necessarily mean that you can’t modify a device you’ve bought, it just means that things like the API key which connected it to the backend will be invalidated and you’ll have to set the device up some other way. That’s a safety mechanism, and even I want it to be present in hardware I buy. Likewise I don’t want someone to be able to take a doorbell from the front of my house, extract my wifi credentials from it, and pivot from that to compromising the entire network. I’m sure some people will say “well just don’t have those things”, and I’m inclined to agree, despite having worked on such devices I’m not sure they’re actually hugely useful to most people. People are buying them though, they’re in the wild, let’s make them as secure as possible.

jon-wood 3y ago

I genuinely wish things were this binary. I’m a hacker (using the original definition) at heart, I want to turn random devices I own into other things, which would be so much easier if it weren’t for encrypted storage and signed boot chains. That’s all very well until you start talking about hardware that does things like providing video of the inside of someone’s home. I’m still behind being able to modify them and use them as you please, but if you do so that should be self-evident, because otherwise *someone else* can do so, and you won’t know until video appears on the internet if you walking back from the shower. TPMs don’t necessarily mean that you can’t modify a device you’ve bought, it just means that things like the API key which connected it to the backend will be invalidated and you’ll have to set the device up some other way. That’s a safety mechanism, and even I want it to be present in hardware I buy. Likewise I don’t want someone to be able to take a doorbell from the front of my house, extract my wifi credentials from it, and pivot from that to compromising the entire network. I’m sure some people will say “well just don’t have those things”, and I’m inclined to agree, despite having worked on such devices I’m not sure they’re actually hugely useful to most people. People are buying them though, they’re in the wild, let’s make them as secure as possible.