Free Rootkit with Every New Intel Machine

[Peter Gutmann]

"Ian Farquhar (ifarquha)" <ifarquha at cisco.com> writes:

>For example: the Gigabyte GA-965QM-DS2 (rev 2.0) which "features security
>enhancement by TPM".  More common (ASUS, Foxconn) was the "TPM Connector",
>which seemed to be a hedged bet, by replacing the cost of the TPM chip with
>the cost of a socket.

Those are actually misleading, since there's no certainty that you'll be able
to find anything that'll actually plug into them.  That is, not only are the
TPM whatever-they-are-that-goes-there's almost impossible to find, but if you
do find one there's no guarantee that it'll actually work when plugged into
the header. In practice this is just a way of adding the "TPM" keyword to your
marketing without having to actually do anything except include a dummy header
on the MB.

(For people who don't work with the innards of PCs much, most motherboards
have assorted unused headers, sites for non-installed ICs, and so on, as a
standard part of the MB.  The TPM header is just another one).

Peter.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
The Cryptography Mailing List
Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo at metzdowd.com