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Comment by balena | Hacker News Reader

Isn't this approach significantly less secure than Apple's though? As far as I understand the secure enclave coprocessor in Apple devices stores key material and implements user verification (TouchID etc.), right? Instead software like tpm-fido bridges (in software) a user verification mechanism (maybe even a fingerprint reader) and the system's TPM. But such a system can be interposed with mere root access, and the TPM tricked in giving out its secrets, no? Please correct me if I'm getting it wrong, but Apple's approach is instead resistant even to full kernel compromise, precisely because the communication between TouchID/FaceID and the secure enclave cannot be interposed.

I'm a tpm-fido user myself by the way, thank you psanford!

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Yes, having the verification done by the secure enclave itself is more secure. The TPM spec does allow for direct integration with biometric devices, but I'm not aware of any general purpose computers that ship in this configuration.

> TPM tricked in giving out its secrets

To be clear, the key can never leave the TPM (with how tpm-fido is implemented). The threat is an attacker can perform an online attack by getting the TPM to sign messages it shouldn't. But you couldn't steal the key from the TPM and use it somewhere else.

But it doesn't really matter for the Webauthn threat model. An attacker with root access can steal your browser sessions directly.

> To be clear, the key can never leave the TPM (with how tpm-fido is implemented).

Yep sorry you're right you wouldn't get the actual keys to use elsewhere, you can just use them as if you had them on the "compromised" device only, my bad.

> But it doesn't really matter for the Webauthn threat model. An attacker with root access can steal your browser sessions directly.

If you're using WebAuthn to authorize the emission of session tokens you're absolutely right, just get root and steal them from the browser :) but WebAuthn is more versatile than that. You could e.g. require a WebAuthn assertion to authorize a payment. In that case root access still doesn't help you with a secure enclave, but is sufficient to trick your server in believing the user has authorized the operation with tpm-fido, right? Again I absolutely don't mean to detract from tpm-fido, just pointing out that, very sadly, I don't think a TPM+fingerprint reader+software can really replace integrated solutions like Apple's secure enclave, or a yubikey, etc. In general unless I'm mistaken, it's not a tpm-fido shortcoming specifically.

I agree that the secure enclave with integrated touch id is more secure. However, if your threat model is an attacker has root on your system, the secure enclave isn't going to protect you from much.

A compromised main UI device could also show the wrong account recipient, even if hardware key is used. The text could be changed on the screen when the user meant to send a small payment to someone else. Yubikey will be pressed like usual. Apple's standard prompt on the phone may not have the recipient shown.

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