Re:Apple, Google and Microsoft Commit to Expanded Support fo...
by lxgr on Thursday May 05, 2022 @05:18PM
(#31278527)
> booting an old computer with no wifi capabilities and no hard disk from a Linux Live CD.
By doing that, you are increasing your trusted code base by several orders of magnitudes doing that. This might be fine for your purposes, but in a corporate environment, it might very much not be.
> Then I only need to trust the specs, not the HSM vendor.
You do trust the HSM (vendor) no matter how you use it. Ironically, the more modern a cryptographic protocol is, the more opportunity for surreptitious key exfiltration there is. This could be in the form of predictable (using a shared secret) initialization vectors, wrapped keys and much more.
You also trust an HSM to be more tamper-resistant and/or more hardened against logical attacks than a regular computer, or there would not really be a point in using one in the first place.
By doing that, you are increasing your trusted code base by several orders of magnitudes doing that. This might be fine for your purposes, but in a corporate environment, it might very much not be.
> Then I only need to trust the specs, not the HSM vendor.
You do trust the HSM (vendor) no matter how you use it. Ironically, the more modern a cryptographic protocol is, the more opportunity for surreptitious key exfiltration there is. This could be in the form of predictable (using a shared secret) initialization vectors, wrapped keys and much more.
You also trust an HSM to be more tamper-resistant and/or more hardened against logical attacks than a regular computer, or there would not really be a point in using one in the first place.