- cross-posted to:
- videos@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- videos@lemmy.world
You must log in or register to comment.
Trusted computing has been a trap, slowly closing over the course of years. And with so many things like it, it happens very slowly at first, then all at once. The door is closing. Escape their environment before you can’t anymore.
We’ve seen that consumers can no longer dictate the market, they are dictating the market at us. This will not get better, you have to be proactive.
EDIT: Richard Stallman article that is necessary reading on the matter, Can You Trust Your Computer?. Do you find this hard to believe?
Couldn’t have said it better myself. This is what they’ve done and are continuing to do to phones. We talk about the Apple and Google’s “walled gardens” but it’s even more than that. It’s about only allowing “trusted” applications to run, on “trusted” operating systems, with “trusted” drivers and “trusted” hardware, for “your security”, to “protect you” (from yourself). But it’s really about control, complete control, not just of our devices but of us as people.
That is what they intend to do to all computing devices. Over time, gradually. They know they can’t do it overnight and force it down people’s throats, because it’s fundamentally anti-freedom, people will resist, rebel, start to switch to devices and systems that allow them to take back their personal and computing autonomy, using technology to enable their own goals instead of what the manufacturers and services “allow”. So they have to slowly creep it in. People still resist and rebel, but they keep pushing ever so subtly towards more control for them and less control for you. One step back is followed by two steps forward, then another step back when people resist, then another two steps forward. Progress keeps being made, despite the resistance. They will keep normalizing it until people say “well of course they have to protect <x>” and we forget that the freedom to decide what we ourselves are willing to trust so we can do what we want with the hardware and software we own is a fundamental and necessary human right.
They know they can’t do it overnight and force it down people’s throats, because it’s fundamentally anti-freedom, people will resist, rebel, start to switch to devices and systems that allow them to take back their personal and computing autonomy, using technology to enable their own goals instead of what the manufacturers and services “allow”. So they have to slowly creep it in.
This is exactly what Windows 11 is. I have a background in large scale system deployments and if you want anything to be effective, you have to baseline it. What better way than with a the rollout of a mandatory OS upgrade demanding these features?
You can’t crack the trusted computing whip if everyone isn’t on that same baseline. Mark my words, I’d bet a fucking limb on it, once Windows 11 sees a significant market share the decline will become much more severe, much more quickly. They’re hungry, they relented a bit on Windows 10 in the EU for another year because they’re so close, what’s one more year. They can taste how close it is now …
To me it’s like a password, or login token. Who has it owns that machine. The issue is definitely that industry is scamming people out of essentially their password and changing it on us so it’s there’s and not ours.
Very uninformed person here and a genuine question. Isn’t TPM endorsed by respected security projects such as GrapheneOS, I mean the Titan chip isn’t some type of TPM equivalent for computers and one of the main reasons GrapheneOS doesn’t support other phones that aren’t Pixel?
Trusted computing and TPMs aren’t inherently bad. Like all issues of trust, it comes down to who the trusted parties are and what they’re asking of you.
So for example, let’s start with the idea of a work computer. Say you work for a bank and they issue you a laptop. In order to access all the sensitive data related to a bank, certain guarantees must be made about the environment. The hard drive must have full disk encryption (FDE) so that if it’s ever lost or stolen, the information that may have been on it can’t be compromised. This is not your laptop. This is not your environment. This is for the most part, totally fair.
Now let’s consider Microsoft and your personal device. Microsoft is forcing you into their trusted environment by requiring online accounts and TPM/SecureBoot. And how do you benefit? FDE through BitLocker, sure. But you know there are other FDE solutions and BitLocker results in you losing control of your keys because they are automatically uploaded through your online account to Microsoft for “recovery” purposes. ~Source ~Related What Microsoft is really saying here is that they have a trusted environment, and if you are to be a trusted party in that environment with the “privilege” of accessing their software and services, you must submit your personal device to their rules. Are you starting to feel the icky vibes here?
This is made worse by TPM 2.0 supporting remote attestation.
This of course raises the question, verified to what degree and to whose standards? Are they simply trying to protect us from maliciously crafted software, or is it DRM to prevent running pirated content, Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 2.0 and Secure Boot for Call of Duty. Of course this is ostensibly for anti-cheat, but you see how quickly that moves adjacent to other purposes. How much are you willing to give up to maintain (a sense of) security?
EDIT: One final point. Trusted systems are the general security engineering concept of protecting systems through enforced policies to achieve certain levels of trust. Trusted Computing is a very specific set of technologies with a board of directors worth taking a quick look at …
Are we saying here that using Linux + TPM = recommended, using Microsoft + TPM = burn?
Mostly, kind of.
You can use the TPM to automatically decrypt a LUKS root volume at boot just like you would BitLocker, however your recovery keys aren’t automatically uploaded to a Microsoft account, you must manage them yourself (generally I see this as a benefit but the layman may appreciate Microsoft’s “assistance” here). https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Trusted_Platform_Module
You can also use it for SSH, https://www.ledger.com/blog/ssh-with-tpm
⚠️ WARNING, what follows is much more my personal speculation on things so absolutely take this with a grain of salt.
The TPM isn’t ever really under the user’s direct control - it’s used by applications that hook into it. On Linux, I anticipate you would be much more protected from the remote attestation aspects of TPM 2.0 phoning out to 3rd party servers for verification because in general that just does not vibe with the FOSS standards and sensibilities. HOWEVER, in my wildest speculations it may still be possible to fall victim to that through proprietary software. Currently things like Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop, or Activision’s Call of Duty don’t work under Linux. If Microsoft gets particularly desperate, I wouldn’t put it past them to actually distribute a native Office for Linux package, or work with Adobe or Activision to do likewise for their programs as a baited hook. Any proprietary, closed-source software can still communicate with the exposed TPM for that remote attestation and refuse to run if they find tampered data, pirated files, or other running applications they object to (I don’t know exactly what form it would take but it could be any or all of these). Effectively they maintain control over your system by right of denial; if you want to run their software you play by their rules.
This of course doesn’t matter if you have no desire to run that software. Again, the TPM itself is not directly malicious and as long as you don’t engage with software that would use it maliciously, it’s fine to have it active and enabled within your OS.
So, what is the point of the TPM “rant” if it has great use?
Well, I wouldn’t say great, merely useful.
The rant is because I’m trying to provide a balanced view of it without coming off as a fearmonger. TPM is certainly not without its uses, but it’s a leash that can be yanked on. Under Windows, you’re fully in Microsoft’s world and they will yank that leash. But given the right leverage and circumstances, that leash can and very well may extend into Linux as well if you allow the software through with it.
Be careful. Use it if you will but remember what it is capable of.
The thing is, trusted computing as a security feature isn’t useless. For the particular case of phones, people generally use relatively low entropy passwords, because it’s impractical to do otherwise. The Titan chip uses trusted computing technologies to ensure that an attacker with physical access cannot bruteforce the password, which it does by forcing a timeout between successive attempts. It might do other things too, this isn’t my area of expertise, but (I believe) it isn’t needed for the general functioning of the device, as opposed to e.g. the intel ME.
Of course, a security chip that you have the power to control would be better, and no less secure, but that doesn’t exist. However, neither the OS itself not the apps directly depend on trusted computing. Otherwise GrapheneOS couldn’t exist in the first place.
Note that this problem doesn’t exist on desktops or laptops: it is entirely possible to memorize a passphrase around 96 bits of entropy, which is high enough that it can’t practically be bruteforced, especially if the algorithm to check if it is correct is computationally slow.
So, you lost a bit of sovereignty for your phone in the interest of security, but phones aren’t private to begin with: the actual modem also uses trusted computing. The devs behind GrapheneOS considered this the best solution to the problem, after weighing the pros and cons. Personally, I’d be happy to have a flip phone which has no password, and then do everything of significance (possibly including call and SMS) on my laptop. That is to say, I’d rather I didn’t have to use GrapheneOS, but it’s compromises align well with my own for now.
Oh yeah, I remember ranting against TPM since two decades ago. Not that it mattered, it happened, here we are
