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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Is anyone here using their hardware TPM chips for credentials? (lemmy.world)

submitted 10 months ago by j4k3@lemmy.world to c/linux@lemmy.ml

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I'm curious about the possible uses of the hardware Trusted Protection Module for automatic login or transfer encryption. I'm not really looking to solve anything or pry. I'm just curious about the use cases as I'm exploring network attached storage and to a lesser extent self hosting. I see a lot of places where public private keys are generated and wonder why I don't see people mention generating the public key from TPM where the private key is never accessible at all.

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[–] mb_@lemm.ee 2 points 10 months ago

While I don't use TPM myself (I dislike being tied to a specific hardware) the way it protects you is:

Disk is protected through encryption, so you can't remove and inject anything/hack the password.

If boot is protected/signed/authorized only, a random person can't load an external OS and modify the disk either.

All this together would say, even if someone acquires your computer, they can't do anything to it without an account with access, or an exploit that works before a user logs.

In a way, the attack surface can be bigger than if you simply encrypted your disk with a key and password protect that key.