It would still be an enclave of sorts, but white box cryptography is generally trying to achieve a similar goal as trusted computing, without relying on trusted hardware.
Re:Intel x86 Root of Trust: Loss of Trust
by josh2600 on Thursday March 05, 2020 @03:55PM
(#22498125)
I don’t think the enclave you’re describing exists, nor do I believe there is an enclave that is untrusted hardware.
Do you have an example of such an enclave and how it would operate without a remote attention service in the model where a user can trust that a distributed network they don’t control is safeguarding their key?
If homomorphic encryption advances to the point where it's usable, that would be an example of security on untrusted hardware.
(But I suppose that just proves your point.)
Re:Intel x86 Root of Trust: Loss of Trust
by josh2600 on Thursday March 05, 2020 @06:48PM
(#22499704)
Yes. I think if homomorphic encryption existed in a way that was super fast, we would be using that. It’s real far as far as I can tell.
It's definitely real, but as you stated, incredibly slow (and noisy, though that's dealt with by refreshing). It has limitations currently, but there's good work right now lifting those, so it's definitely something to keep an eye on moving forward.
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this and I don’t really know how to do it without one of those two things.
Edit: like I hear you saying there are possibilities in a distributed computing world, but I don’t have any idea what distributed computing enables for key recovery (except possibly k of n schemes but that’s just replication, not safety).
Edit 2: also, presume that users suck at key management and can’t remember long password strings, 24 words, or be trusted to store a key for a meaningful period of time.