Free Rootkit with Every New Intel Machine

[Jon Callas]

On Jun 25, 2007, at 7:23 PM, Matt Johnston wrote:

> On Mon, Jun 25, 2007 at 04:42:56PM +1200, David G. Koontz wrote:
>>   Apple (mis)uses
>> TPM to unsuccessfully prevent OS X from running on non-Apple  
>> Hardware.
>> All Apple on Intel machines have TPM, that's what 6 percent of new  
>> PCs?
>
> To nit pick, the TPM is only present in some Apple Intel
> machines and isn't used in any of them. See
> http://osxbook.com/book/bonus/chapter10/tpm/
>
> Their OS decryption key is just stored in normal firmware,
> unprotected AIUI.

They've apparently stopped shipping TPMs. There isn't one on my  
MacBook Pro from last November, and it is missing on my wife's new  
Santa Rosa machine.

If you want to see if a machine has one, then the command:

sudo ioreg -w 0 | grep -i tpm

should give something meaningful. Mine reports the existence of  
ApplePCISlotPM, but that's not the same thing.

	Jon

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