Does TPM support/requirements actually have any meaningful impact on a home user? I could understand being a requirement for Windows 11 Pro (which I believe has Bitlocker, but Home does not). I don't see why it would be required for Home, maybe some features just wouldn't be available, but are those features that people actually care about?
If I'm not misremembering, Home can use BitLocker on W11.
The existence of a TPM also lets DPAPI use it, which in turn lets things like browsers and other software protect user data (from malware for example). It also makes new features like Device Bound Session Credentials (DBSC) possible.
But there's also VBS and by extension things like Device Guard. Which in turn entails things like ESS (Enhanced Sign-in Security, more secure biometric auth), Trusted Boot, HVCI, Credential Guard and so on.
DRM is like the last thing it's actually good for, if you actually look into it.
Microsoft has made device encryption available to Home edition users if they sign in with a Microsoft account. It relies on the TPM to seal the volume key.
> Does TPM support/requirements actually have any meaningful impact on a home user?
Disk encryption, Windows Hello and PIN bruteforce prevention. I have no love Microsoft and avoid using Windows whenever I can, but I think making those features accessible to more people is a good thing.
I was under the impression that Bitlocker wasn't available on Windows Home?
If you have an older computer, without TPM 1.2/2.0, then you already don't things like Windows Hello, but you might have secure boot and some brute force prevention, so you wouldn't be worse of as a home user if Microsoft allowed you to run Windows 11.
For new computers I can completely understand that Microsoft would demand that vendors ship systems with TPM 2.0. For upgrades I just struggle to see any really compelling reason, it's not like Apple where Microsoft is trying to also sell hardware, that's mostly on the OEMs.
As of Windows 11, you can use Bitlocker on Windows Home.
(Personally I think you probably shouldn't bother with it unless you set a boot PIN, which still requires Pro to be allowed to change the right group policy settings.)
There are none. It's so immensely frustrating to me that so many people believe that a TPM is a DRM device. I'm sure Richard Stallman's Treacherous Computing article played a big part in this.
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.
In a sense, graphics cards are the root-of-trust for PC-based DRMs (as they implement the necessary components such as HDCP authentication), not the TPM (which is useless for this task). In fact, PlayReady (which is Microsoft's DRM solution) does this exact thing: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/audio-video-ca...
(...or use things such as the already-dead Intel SGX, which never touched TPMs at all)
It goes TPM → OS Integrity (dm-/fs-verity) → Browser Attestation (Web Integrity) → Your banking website no longer working on Linux because of "security". It’s Play Integrity for the PC.
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.
Google SafetyNet is basically swiss cheese with lots of bypass solutions for custom ROMs.
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.
And that’s why Play Integrity is based on hardware attestation and it is no longer a swiss cheese? And Win11 requires specifically TPM 2.0 (usually fTPM) not just any TPM.
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.
> If all DVD players came with watermark detection instead of copy protection
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?
How would you do it if this was the goal? First you introduce TPM to every device under the sun until it’s everywhere, then you just have to flip a switch. You write Patriot Act then stash in the drawer until it’s time...
> 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.
>And Win11 requires specifically TPM 2.0 (usually fTPM) not just any 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.
>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.
Intel SGX was never pushed on anyone and it's also Intel only Skylake to Ice lake and requires vendors to provide consistent firmware updates to stay secure. You can’t run the entire OS in SGX enclave because it can’t do I/O on its own.
> 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.
You can just not buy blurays, they were never popular on PCs anyway. TPM is being pushed on everyone upgrading to Win11. One is opt in, the other is maybe opt out if you jump through hoops, for now. Very different. Also you can do other things with SGX though admittedly it’s mostly useful on servers, but you would still use SGX indirectly via remote attestation. E.g. it’s what Signal uses for some of its core functionality.
> 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.
> The purpose is to prevent users from running unauthorized software on the computers they allegedly own.
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.
Buy a Mac. You'll see that corporate dream come a reality. Immutable OS partition. Security prompts that can no longer be bypassed. Binary signing requirement. It just keeps getting worse and worse, for a power user.
May be "certified UNIX" (when you look at it funny), but it feels like no freedom-loving UNIX-style system I've ever used.
You can turn all that off if you wanted to. OpenCore Legacy Patcher will build you a kernel with the SIP flag mask set to 0xFF, ie, completely disabled.
I can't remember if this was Valorant related but I recall an article voicing concerns that physical hardware in PCs being used to identify users to ban and that the ban would persist when you purchased a used motherboard. Not a great general concern to me for games but the idea has much more sinister potential than just that.
There’s an embedded immutable Endorsment Key (EK) sometimes along with public crypto cert (EKCert) signed by manufacturer the TPM can use to prove its authenticity. With the certificate you can detect the QEMU case.
Widevine L1 requires a trusted execution environment for decrypting video and only showing it on HDCP monitors. It's built on top of Intel PAVP, AMD secure display, or ARM TrustZone in the case of ARM chromebooks and Android devices. TPM is not involved, except in the ARM case where I believe it is used for antirollback counters (on x86, the security coprocessor would probably have that responsibility).
SGX is used for DRM in official Blu-Ray 4K playback on PCs, and Intel removed SGX from client cpus in 11th gen (Ice Lake) which means if you want to play those discs on a PC, you either need an older processor or a Xeon or to give in and use unauthorized software.
I'm not sure that tying their horse to SGX is good for adoption of the format.
Given trends of everything going subscription-only, is it unreasonable to suspect that the future of Windows could be subscription-only and a lot harder to pirate than previously?
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.
> Remember boot-sector viruses? The TPM helps prevent those. DRM is not something that the TPM enables or helps with or facilitates in any way.
¿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.
