Who holds the keys?

Posted Aug 6, 2025 18:45 UTC (Wed) by Arrange1030 (subscriber, #178702)
In reply to: Who holds the keys? by mjg59
Parent article: Don't fear the TPM

From https://trustedcomputinggroup.org/what-is-a-device-identi...

>There are three key use cases for DICE:
...
> in more complex security architectures working together with TPM.

Who holds the keys?

Posted Aug 6, 2025 18:49 UTC (Wed) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link] (3 responses)

DICE also works together with the CPU and RAM and storage and every other component in the phone, but the thing you're complaining about still isn't a TPM.

Who holds the keys?

Posted Aug 11, 2025 15:46 UTC (Mon) by SLi (subscriber, #53131) [Link] (2 responses)

I understand how the proper use of terminology seems and is important, but I also think "TPM" is much better known a name than "HSM", and I think what's happening here is that TPM seems to be becoming a generic name for all HSMs. A bit like kleenex, aspirin or escalator. Probably for a non-expert, it's close enough to make sense.

Who holds the keys?

Posted Aug 11, 2025 17:46 UTC (Mon) by intelfx (subscriber, #130118) [Link]

> I think what's happening here is that TPM seems to be becoming a generic name for all HSMs

At most it might be this way for HSMs _integrated into the platform_ (as reflected in the name, Trusted _Platform_ Module).

There is a variety of pluggable (PCI, USB) HSMs and, to my knowledge, nobody is trying to call them TPMs.

Who holds the keys?

Posted Aug 11, 2025 18:25 UTC (Mon) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

The problem with the "dumbing down" of language (in general) is that it makes clear communication impossible.

For example - in the realm of computers - the number of people who now just talk about RAM. With no clue whether it's actually RAM, or disk. (Made even worse now by those systems that have matching RAM and SSD, 32GB of each maybe.)

Or the COMPUTER LECTURER who re-purposed "real time" to mean "interactive". I had a bit of a go at him but he was unrepentant. And now, twenty years on, I'm working in an industry when real-time errors (that's real real-time) are a major cause of errors and real physical crashes that damage equipment and take systems out of service for hours at a time ...

> Probably for a non-expert, it's close enough to make sense.

The problem is when the non-expert NEEDS to understand the issue, at which point the fact they can't even use the words correctly becomes a MAJOR problem.

Cheers,
Wol