▲ 645 ▼ Fed-up Torvalds suggests disabling AMD’s 'stupid' performance-killing fTPM RNG (www.theregister.com) submitted 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) by floofloof@lemmy.ca to c/linux@lemmy.ml 153 comments fedilink hide all child comments
[–] bear@slrpnk.net 8 points 3 years ago (1 child) There's no downside to having it. There's many downsides to not having it. This seems pretty cut and dry to me. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 2 child comments replies: [–] argv_minus_one@beehaw.org 0 points 3 years ago* (1 child) There’s no downside to having it. Sure there are. If it gets compromised with malicious code, I have no way of removing it. I can protect ring 0. I can keep crap out of ring 0. If all else fails, I can nuke everything in ring 0 and boot a fresh OS installation. But I can't do a single bleeping thing except throw out the whole machine if malware takes over ring -1. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 2 child comments replies: [–] bear@slrpnk.net 1 point 3 years ago (1 child) This is already the case with your motherboard firmware, which fTPM is a part of. You are correct in that you have no real way to handle malware in it except throw it away. This doesn't change in any way if you get rid of TPM. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 2 child comments replies: [–] argv_minus_one@beehaw.org 1 point 3 years ago It decreases the attack surface. permalink fedilink source parent
[–] argv_minus_one@beehaw.org 0 points 3 years ago* (1 child) There’s no downside to having it. Sure there are. If it gets compromised with malicious code, I have no way of removing it. I can protect ring 0. I can keep crap out of ring 0. If all else fails, I can nuke everything in ring 0 and boot a fresh OS installation. But I can't do a single bleeping thing except throw out the whole machine if malware takes over ring -1. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 2 child comments replies: [–] bear@slrpnk.net 1 point 3 years ago (1 child) This is already the case with your motherboard firmware, which fTPM is a part of. You are correct in that you have no real way to handle malware in it except throw it away. This doesn't change in any way if you get rid of TPM. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 2 child comments replies: [–] argv_minus_one@beehaw.org 1 point 3 years ago It decreases the attack surface. permalink fedilink source parent
[–] bear@slrpnk.net 1 point 3 years ago (1 child) This is already the case with your motherboard firmware, which fTPM is a part of. You are correct in that you have no real way to handle malware in it except throw it away. This doesn't change in any way if you get rid of TPM. permalink fedilink source parent hideshow 2 child comments replies: [–] argv_minus_one@beehaw.org 1 point 3 years ago It decreases the attack surface. permalink fedilink source parent
[–] argv_minus_one@beehaw.org 1 point 3 years ago It decreases the attack surface. permalink fedilink source parent