linux-kernel - Re: [RFC PATCH 1/5] rpmb: add Replay Protected Memory Block (RPMB) subsystem

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Date:   Wed, 10 Mar 2021 17:07:34 -0800
From:   James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@...senPartnership.com>
To:     Linus Walleij <linus.walleij@...aro.org>,
        Sumit Garg <sumit.garg@...aro.org>
Cc:     Hector Martin <marcan@...can.st>, Arnd Bergmann <arnd@...aro.org>,
        "open list:ASYMMETRIC KEYS" <keyrings@...r.kernel.org>,
        David Howells <dhowells@...hat.com>,
        Jarkko Sakkinen <jarkko@...nel.org>,
        Joakim Bech <joakim.bech@...aro.org>,
        Alex Bennée <alex.bennee@...aro.org>,
        "linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org" <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        Maxim Uvarov <maxim.uvarov@...aro.org>,
        Ilias Apalodimas <ilias.apalodimas@...aro.org>,
        Ruchika Gupta <ruchika.gupta@...aro.org>,
        "Winkler, Tomas" <tomas.winkler@...el.com>, yang.huang@...el.com,
        bing.zhu@...el.com, Matti.Moell@...nsynergy.com,
        hmo@...nsynergy.com, linux-mmc <linux-mmc@...r.kernel.org>,
        linux-scsi <linux-scsi@...r.kernel.org>,
        linux-nvme@...r.kernel.org, Ulf Hansson <ulf.hansson@...aro.org>,
        Arnd Bergmann <arnd.bergmann@...aro.org>
Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH 1/5] rpmb: add Replay Protected Memory Block (RPMB)
 subsystem

On Thu, 2021-03-11 at 01:49 +0100, Linus Walleij wrote:
> The use case for TPM on laptops is similar: it can be used by a
> provider to lock down a machine, but it can also be used by the
> random user to store keys. Very few users beside James
> Bottomley are capable of doing that (I am not)

Yes, that's the problem with the TPM: pretty much no-one other than
someone prepared to become an expert in the subject can use it.  This
means that enabling RPMB is unlikely to be useful ... you have to
develop easy use cases for it as well.

>  but they exist.
> https://blog.hansenpartnership.com/using-your-tpm-as-a-secure-key-store/

It's the difficulty of actually *using* the thing as a keystore which
causes the problem.   The trick to expanding use it to make it simple.
Not to derail the thread, but this should hopefully become a whole lot
easier soon.  Gnupg-2.3 will release with easy to use TPM support for
all your gpg keys:

https://git.gnupg.org/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?p=gnupg.git;a=log;h=6720f1343aef9342127380b155c19e12c92d65ac

It's not the end of the road by any means, but hopefully it will become
a beach head of sorts for more uses.

James