People here REALLY need to start understanding this issue. Remote Attestation is the kind of tech that if abused will end free computing over night.
- Private Access Token [0]
- Web Environment Integrity [1]
among other proposals.
The idea that understanding is the problem feels like a fallacy. People need to upgrade hardware, and when all chips contain such functionality, consumers won't have a choice of alternatives. What you want is legislation (or a dominant competitor lacking such features, which doesn't exist).
After all, legislation is what is forbidding you from producing a competing x86 processor with the changes you want.
Personally I think any form of attestation is evil.
Ironically, installing Windows 10 and activating ESU would lead to longer hardware life.
Of course, I didn't. Instead, I installed Linux on that laptop too. My partner had no issues switching.
I'm not sure Microsoft took the best approach. I might have opted into a "Windows 11 Slow CPU" SKU if it was marketed right. That might have been a little kinder than "all these CPUs with this awful series of bugs are trash, even though we have had a successful workaround".
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectre_(security_vulnerabilit...
But also that's a bit victim blaming isn't it? Do you want to explain to your grandfather or partner or child "Oh sorry, you had a password stolen because you chose to visit Google.com on a day where Google let an ad buyer attach Spectre exploit malware"? (Google could also chose to not let ads attach JS at all, but that's a very different problem.)
Computers have millions of places they get code from to run. Is "your CPU has a data leaking bug in it" the user's problem or the OS's problem? When there's a mitigation the OS can manage? When security-in-depth is an option?
I installed Bazzite on my own old Desktop not supported by Windows 11. One of the first things the Linux kernel spits out on boot if I have the boot console up is about running with Spectre mitigations. The Linux kernel also thinks it is important to mitigate (as Windows 10 did, but Windows 11 doesn't include and so doesn't support this old Desktop).
The point I want to make is that allowing remote code execution is such a big attack surface that it makes all the other security measures look silly, which indicates that signed execution contexts in them self is an attack on privacy and control etc.
If there was any actual security concerns there could be a push for server side rendering or something.
No, I think they bend over backwards not to do it overnight because of the outcry but try to make all required changes and enforcements gradually over the years so in the end you will have no choice but there will not be any sudden change that would spark protests.
Okay, but, that was like 15 years ago, on some shitty first-run computers that no one bought. A failed first attempt. I've never met a single person that owned, or has ever used, a Windows RT device.
The world has moved on. But oddly continues to buy bootloader-locked iPhones and Androids by the bucketful.
Dwelling on the past isn't going to move us forward. Anyone pushing the "Secure Boot and TPM are evil" trope in 2025 is objectively a fool and should be ignored. Most don't even realize what a TPM does, they think it's some secret chip inserted by glowies into their computers to prevent them from running free software. No.
Forgetting the past will make PC's as closed as phones.
But they are not in control of Secure Boot.
Microsoft runs a root CA that is pre-installed on most PCs. It could have been Verisign or someone else, but MS made sense at the time, likely because they had additional code signing expertise.
You are free to delete these keys and/or install your own. If there wasn't preexisting infrastructure, Secure Boot would be DOA for most people.
> Microsoft runs a root CA that is pre-installed on most PCs.
How can you write those two statements on two adjacent rows? In practice that makes MS a gatekeeper.
Some combination of the advertising industry and those with a vested interest in anti-fraud such as banks will eventually try to sneak remote attestation in there, which has the potential to put a complete end to ownership of devices as we have always understood it.
I wouldn't call the first Microsoft Surface, Surface 2, Dell XPS 10, and Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 11 products that no one bought.
> I've never met a single person that owned, or has ever used, a Windows RT device.
I have and I also regrettably bought one myself.
> Dwelling on the past isn't going to move us forward.
The past dictates the future, and history repeats itself. Microsoft made their intentions known, it would be foolish to pretend they haven't. They continue to make their intentions known today with the Pluton cryptographic co-processor, that paired with a TPM, can enforce remote attestation by design. That is literally the intent of the Pluton chip: ensuring platform integrity and securely attesting to 3rd parties that your system is Blessed/trusted.
> Anyone pushing the "Secure Boot and TPM are evil" trope in 2025 is objectively a fool and should be ignored
Anyone tearing down this strawman is tilting at windmills for some reason.
> Most don't even realize what a TPM does, they think it's some secret chip inserted by glowies into their computers to prevent them from running free software.
I wouldn't project ignorance on those you don't actually know. You can understand what a TPM does, understand how it can be abused today and acknowledge how it was abused in the past.
Remote attestation can be misused, yes. But why writing it as TPM is the problem? In cases where remote attestation is used for good, TPM improves the setup, if anything.
I dont see the rationale for what you wrote, and am genuinely curious what it is.
Root your phone, even if it is just for the ability to make full backups (because that is, to this day, not a thing on Android)? Say goodbye to banking, most games, even the proposed new EU "digital identity" government wallet was supposed to enforce attestation.
And everyone with a phone on the "bad vendor" list that either doesn't get Google certification from the start or gets it revoked due to sanctions? Same.
The preparations for eIDAS 2.0 (the EU thing) has been heavily inspired by SSI. If they keep up the good work, and implement it properly, security and privacy will be top notch. And that is only possible by using TPM (or really SE when we talk about mobile phones).
Yes, I know that eIDAS might end up not meeting the early promises. We will have to see. But in that case it will be despite the possibilities that the hardware provides, not because of them.
Let's compare these scenarios:
A) TPMs are optional and 30% of users have them. A bank is thinking about requiring remote attestation to use their services. Since they'd lock out 70% of users they decide to not do it.
B) TPMs are mandatory and 90% of users have them. A bank is thinking about requiring remote attestation to use their services. Since they'd only lock out 10% of users they decide to do it.
And banking is the nice example here. Refusing to serve a site if the user is using an ablocker is very much in the interest of powerful players in the space, see WEI. Every platform that has wide spread TPM adoption, namely Android and iOS have shown that they will abuse them for anti-consumer purposes sooner or later. We are talking about Microsoft here, the current and past poster child for anti-consumer decisions.
I hope that explains why making TPMs blanket available introduces new risks to sovereign computing.
This was not the case with the initial rollout of Secure Boot, it was combined with locked BIOS to lock PCs so that they could only boot Windows 8 on some devices. This was the case on Windows RT ARM machines from that era.
All that has to be done today for machines to be locked down again is to flip a bit or blow an e-fuse. It's already the case on phones and tablets.
There is also a real potential for abusing TPMs or cryptographic co-processors to enforce remote attestation.
I say this as someone who agrees with your first paragraph and uses Secure Boot + TPMs on all of my machines.