From: Alexander Sotirov (alexsotirov.net)
Date: Mon Nov 24 2008 - 06:52:14 CST

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On Sun, Nov 23, 2008 at 04:06:40PM +0100, Joanna Rutkowska wrote:
> ... which, of course, doesn't prevent the hypervisor from being exploited 5 secs
> after it got securely loaded, e.g. via some buffer overflow bug...

Of course :-)

> But, nevertheless, yes, this indeed is a very important feature of the TPM (and
> the whole trusted boot concept, like e.g. Intel TXT), and people should
> eventually stop talking that TPM is bad. It is not, and it indeed can provide
> great value for users concerned about security (and not only physical security!).
>
> BTW, I'm also glad to see a VMWare researcher acknowledging it :) So far, only
> the Xen hypervisor can use the trusted boot mechanism via the Intel-provided
> tboot component AFAIK. So, looking forward to see the ESX implementing trusted
> boot at some point in time.

Actually I just quit VMware, so my opinions are my own. I can't speak for the
company or comment on ESX.

I do agree that TPM has a lot more interesting uses than just DRM. It really
looks like we're building something similar to the Secure Hardware Environment
from Rainbow's End. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not, but I doubt it
can be stopped, so we might as well try to take advantage of it.

Take care,
Alex

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