> but are those features that people actually care about?
The users? No.
The corporations that make DRM? Yes.
The users? No.
The corporations that make DRM? Yes.
A TPM is useless for DRM, and there are way more suited solutions like Intel's PAVP that takes an encrypted video stream and puts it on the screen directly, yet I don't see nearly as much uproar about that.
(...or use things such as the already-dead Intel SGX, which never touched TPMs at all)
Encrypted video is a red herring. The real long game is to also get your "secure" video player to refuse playback if it detects watermark in the pirated video. This patches the analog hole.
If you have attested Windows it can just refuse to download "freeworld" VLC because it can be used for piracy and/or even watching child pornography. Imagine that!
Of course you can use Linux instead but now you have to use the approved distro that also won’t let you run "dangerous" apps.
This is of course slippery slope argument and Microsoft would not be able to force all that right now, but better get started on the foundations. Some future government can then just force them to implement the rest, but by then it will be just a flip of a switch.
"TPM is not DRM" argument seriously lacks imagination.
A TPM may only attest that it has received an expected set of measurements (hashes). As long as discrete TPMs or PCs with unlocked CPUs exist (w/o Boot Guard), one may simply take a TPM and replay "golden" measurements to it. Bypassing this would be trivially easy.
A TPM does not have control over execution on the CPU. It only receives data from the CPU. If you have control over execution on the CPU from the reset vector, you can just replay whatever you want to a TPM and extract secrets that way. That's why TPM backed disk encryption without configuring a PIN is insecure.
Microsoft does not have the same level of control over the entire PC ecosystem as Google has over Android. That's why it's important to support open source alternatives.
You’re also entirely missing the point. Yes, you can bypass TPM based DRM to extract the unencrypted video (or just analog hole it) that’s why the game is to lock down the OS so you just can’t play it.
If all DVD players came with watermark detection instead of copy protection you wouldn’t have bootlegs because now every single client device needs to do the bypass instead of just once to extract unencrypted stream.
How many people have bypassed or hardware modded Playstations or Switches? This is what you’re talking about. Almost everyone will just accept it.
That is an enormous "if". Do you think Microsoft is going to or is able to enforce this on every single software provider? Even in your Android example that's just not happening, and you can happily sideload apps. You can still develop your own apps on the same Android phone that you use for banking.
> And sorry but how many people have bypassed Playstations or Switches. This is what you’re talking about. Most people will just accept it.
People accept this with consoles because a console is a device exclusively for consuming media, and all developers apply for a devkit. I just don't see that happening in the PC space. You think Microsoft is suddenly going to dump this on third party software developers and force everyone to go through certification and to buy devkits? Without a mass exodus to Linux?
> you can happily sideload apps.
This is extremely weak argument when the other major platform does not let you do that, right? Sideloading could go away at any moment just like that. That’s my point. There’s nothing technical stopping it.
> People accept this with consoles because a console is a device exclusively for consuming media, and all developers apply for a devkit.
Already Windows has: Smart screen (which requires code signing) and app store. Locking down the OS and Apps is hardly unprecedented. Both Windows and MacOS now have developer modes which is a software devkit equivalent.
> Without a mass exodus to Linux?
That’s why you wait until mass adoption (win11) only then start boiling the frog.
Look, I acknowledge this is slippery slope argument. But the slope is very slippery. Something is clearly going on.
There are TPM 2.0 dTPMs. If the conspiracy is that they want to push people towards "hardware attestation", then they're doing a pretty bad job.
>You’re also entirely missing the point. Yes, you can bypass TPM based DRM to extract the unencrypted video (or just analog hole it) that’s why the game is to lock down the OS so you just can’t play it.
There's no need to "lock down the OS" when there's already a locked down OS on the CPU itself (intel SGX), is way more secure (because it doesn't have a bazillion userspace programs and third party drivers loaded), but for whatever reason gets way less flak than TPM.
> There are TPM 2.0 dTPMs. If the conspiracy is that they want to push people towards "hardware attestation", then they're doing a pretty bad job.
No "normies" are doing TPM bypasses. That’s the point. Majority will eventually be on unbypassable TPM.
Considering that's the only way to play most DRM protected 4K videos, it's probably more of a "push" than requiring TPM. It didn't even have the fig leaf of being usable for FDE or webauthn.
>No "normies" are doing TPM bypasses. That’s the point. Majority will eventually be on unbypassable TPM.
If the bar is "normies", then you don't even need TPM. You can just slap denuvo or whatever and call it a day.
> If the bar is "normies", then you don't even need TPM. You can just slap denuvo or whatever and call it a day.
Again, missing the point. Denuvo, Widevine, whatever, it’s all weak to crack once & enjoy but only if you control the OS. The Great TPM Conspiracy Theory is about limiting what you can do with your mainstream Windows/Linux/Macos installation, in the ways I’ve laid out earlier. Taking the ‘P’ out of PC.
I wouldn't expect many examples to exist yet. You want to wait until almost everyone is on Windows 11 before you get up to those shenanigans.
https://support-valorant.riotgames.com/hc/en-us/articles/169...
I've maintained for several years now that the actual corporate wet dream is that they can lock down the average PC architecture/OS to the same degree they have on phones. Because unfortunately, in the phone sector, the market has already shown the majority of users don't care who really owns their devices.
My hope is that Linux gets wide enough adoption to prevent that from becoming a feasible option for them in the future.
May be "certified UNIX" (when you look at it funny), but it feels like no freedom-loving UNIX-style system I've ever used.
This has already happened: Linux had wide enough adoption that Microsoft could be convinced to allow alternative operating systems in Secure Boot.
My hope is that Linux gets wide enough adoption to prevent that from becoming a feasible option for them in the future.
Linux already got a really wide adoption --- in the form of Android.
Yes, anticheat tends to detect virtualization too, so there's extra cat and mouse there, of course.
I'm not sure that tying their horse to SGX is good for adoption of the format.
Please read this, and do your part to make the world a bit more educated, on average: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_Platform_Module#Overvi...
If you don't dismiss my comment as the comment of a corporate shill, you might learn something, and in the future that knowledge may help you. I don't know, I can't predict the future, but I do know that ignorance is dumb.
¿Porque no los dos? As noted elsewhere in this thread, TPM certainly facilitates VBS [0], and games like Valorant are already using that for anticheat [1]. As long as application programs can use it to help detect the environment being 'tampered' with (as opposed to the system just wrapping it up in a report for the user), they can use it to protect their particular application state, and I don't see why that shouldn't include DRM state.
[0] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/de...
[1] https://support-valorant.riotgames.com/hc/en-us/articles/169...
What prevents boot sector viruses is Secure Boot, not TPM.