Why is this a problem?
> If the government is really saying the equivalent of "trust us, but not the people you usually trust",
I don't understand what you're talking about here. There is no additional trust necessary.
No problem the users install their own browser.
Now we ask Microsoft to limit software that is signed by it effectively granted permission to run some software but not others. The alternatively browser is right out.
The user installs his own OS now we ask Dell to only allow it's computers to boot software that implements the same restrictions as Microsoft has agreed to.
So the user gets his own computer. Now we simply ask your bank or better yet your ISP not to connect to "insecure" devices that don't follow the standards described.
Now you need a substantial unlatched vulnerability to be able to resolve foobar.com
At it's root to make a users own device effectively restrict what they are allowed to do you need something difficult to defeat that you control and they do not.
At one point a us senator wanted this used to allow music labels to remotely destroy users computers if they believed that you were pirating music and every other restriction described has been implemented or discussed using on user devices belonging to users and most implemented.
I mean sure, if Microsoft decided that it wanted to do all of the things you said, and could convince all of the OEMs to help, and a bunch of services and ISPs or whatever, yes, that would suck. It's a totally fabricated hypothetical that would never play out, but sure.
Accessing the tpm doesn't mean what you think it means. You can't by design get the key out of the tpm nor necessarily control which keys are trusted by local software nor remote machines.
Control of what software is allowed to run is ultimately control over everything else because one kind of control gives you every other variety. The fact that you can disable secure boot or control which keys are trusted is a nicety that could be withdrawn next year along with your ability to run Linux.
Your vendor approved software can then implement any sort of restrictions it pleases and remotely attest to the efficacy of such restrictions.
Yes sir mr Amazon sir user id running trusted windows 11 and can't save or share this video as per your contract with Disney nor are they allowed to view any known pirate sites or sites that look like pirate sites according to our heuristics.
Alternatively. Please upgrade to a trusted windows 11 machine to view this content.
I know this... I've even repeatedly stated as such in this thread.
The rest of your post is just a silly hypothetical and frankly linking gnu is just discrediting.
The last sentence is particularly disappointing. The article's analysis is correct and not particularly complicated it stands on its own regardless of whatever bias you possess.
> allowing third parties a say in what software is run is literally the entire point of remote attestation
No it isn't.
We're clearly of two very different minds, there's no way we're finding common ground on this, and I've already done the work of explaining to many people what TPM technology is, so I feel like I've done my part.
[1]https://superuser.com/questions/1024111/adding-keys-to-secur...
???
And how is HP fucking their eufi up a Microsoft problem?
My claim was that there where computers where Linux only ran with Microsofts signature. I listed two systems (HP/Surface) where this is the case. Mainly because finding more is a pain, with support requests more likely to go off to nowhere instead of outright showing that no support for it exists.
One might make the case that Microsoft claimed it would require the ability to add alternative keys and conveniently failed to enforce that claim. If the goal was to blame Microsoft instead of just showing that Secure Boot can be easily used to lock users into one top down approved system.
There is absolutely at least some money to be made locking down machines and corporate America would sell our kidney's for a quarter if they could get away with it.
There would likely have been lawsuits against Microsoft if they had taken further steps on that road but that doesn't mean they won't be interested in boiling us all slowly now or in the future.
Without it how do you keep someone from running whatever they please and lying to the machine on the other side of the connection?
You have to trust every manufacturer of every other chip the same way also, and we have in fact found incredible breaches of that trust already many times over, and so it's too late to suggest it's a crazy thing to worry about.
The only saving grace with other chips is thst they are generic and at least you usually have your choice of some range of suppliers.
Will I be able to buy a laptop with an intentionally defective or fake tpm if I want, which will allow me to use modern software without trusting anyone?
Probably not. Probably plenty of Chinese manufacturers would be willing to produce them, like all the HDCP defeating hdmi switches, but probably software vendors will have some way to detect and invalidate them.
Why? What would a backdoor in the TPM do?
Another implementation could be used to tie DRM to hardware and then brick any hardware that is in license violation. Actually I can think of many scenarios that have a unique identifier on the hardware could be used/abused by corporations.
It should be noted that I lived through a time when corporations wanted this same setup on televisions. Each TV would have a unique chip that would give corporations control over what a person could watch, or even brick their TV. This was called the V-Chip. [0] And then of course, there was also the Clipper-Chip [1]. In terms of boiling frogs [2], TPM could be the base framework to slowly reintroduce the Clipper-Chip under a different name. i.e. used to boot-strap the pieces of code required to watch movies, buy things, browse the web, anything you can imagine.
[0] - https://www.popularmechanics.com/culture/tv/a19408909/20-yea...
This is a very significant win and critical to 'zero trust', which is now something the government is telling people to embrace.
If the government is really saying the equivalent of "trust us, but not the people you usually trust", that should a huge warning sign. The analogies to 1984 are disturbingly close.