Re: [PLUG] Topic for PLUG North tomorrow -- Goodbye Windows 10

[Rich Freeman via plug <plug@lists.phillylinux.org>]

On 10/13/2025 11:14 PM, JP Vossen via plug wrote:
> They will argue that it's for "security" [1] and performance reasons.  
> BULLSHIT!  Yes, TPM is a nice-to-have (sort of, not going there).  
> WHICH IS WORSE for the entire world, a huge number (40%+?) of Win-10 
> machines that stop getting support and thus sooner or later (sooner) 
> become bots rife with malware?  Or having TPM?
Well, I'm of the mindset that TPM is generally a good thing, with the 
exception of vendor-controlled remote attestation.

My concern is that MS is probably boiling the frog here.  The Win11 
requirements basically ensure that every PC will have TPM fairly soon.  
It is being enabled, right now, only for the security benefits to the user.

The problem is that once Win11 is fairly ubiquitous MS could choose to 
start pushing remote attestation.  That basically means content and 
services that can't be made to run on or be accessed on non-MS-certified 
OSes.

Remote attestation would be fine if it were completely under the control 
of the user - ie there are no keys present in the machine at 
distribution that the user does not have a copy of.  If a user wants to 
register a device with a service they choose they could just have 
software output a certificate (signed by themselves or any CA they 
choose) and register it with the service.  Then the user could be 
completely assured that any tampering with their device would invalidate 
the authorization, but the service provider would have no assurance that 
the device was in any particular state when the CSR was generated.

I'm already having a bit of frustration with this with GrapheneOS, when 
random applications implement SafetyNet checks that don't just check 
that the OS hasn't been tampered with, but they also check that it is 
Google certified.  GrapheneOS actually implements secure boot/etc (so in 
order to change the OS the bootloader enforces a device wipe just as 
with the stock OS), and can pass SafetyNet checks that ensure it wasn't 
modified, but of course it isn't Google-certified.  Ironically all my 
banking apps work just fine - it is random stuff like the UPS delivery 
service app that break.  And of course no NFC payments allowed.  I fear 
that this might be the future in store for desktop apps in a few years...

--
Rich

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