- cross-posted to:
- programming@programming.dev
- cross-posted to:
- programming@programming.dev
The much maligned “Trusted Computing” idea requires that the party you are supposed to trust deserves to be trusted, and Google is DEFINITELY NOT worthy of being trusted, this is a naked power grab to destroy the open web for Google’s ad profits no matter the consequences, this would put heavy surveillance in Google’s hands, this would eliminate ad-blocking, this would break any and all accessibility features, this would obliterate any competing platform, this is very much opposed to what the web is.
TPMs are a security threat. If malware manages to infiltrate it, then that malware is now impossible to remove and has unfettered access to the entire system. You have to junk the entire computer.
No they don’t. Worst case known attacks have resulted in insecure keys being generated. And even if malware could somehow be transferred out of it you wouldn’t have to trash your whole computer - just unplug the TPM
I’m afraid you are sorely mistaken. Here’s an RCE vulnerability in the TPM 2.0 reference implementation.
Your own article says it’s VMs. The tpm itself can be bricked. Ok that sucks. Still not persistent like you describe.
The vulnerability is not specific to VMs. Malicious code running with privileges on the host operating system can also exploit it.
But yes, this can also be used to escape the VM sandbox, and since the TPM has full access to the entire system, exploit code can then gain full privileges on the host.
Can the TPM firmware not write to the flash where it’s stored? If it can, then an RCE exploit can do so too, and thereby make itself persistent.
Basically, any successful RCE exploit in a TPM equals total and permanent compromise of the entire physical machine. That’s why the TPM is a security threat rather than a security feature.