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Comment by grishka | Hacker News Reader

Security chips shouldn't be black boxes in the first place.

Agreed, what's going on should be completely transparent. The security of the system must only depend on the private keys and implementation correctness.

While security by obscurity is not ideal, it is an additional hurdle. Apple knows that security flaws in their stuff is very valuable for both nefarious and state hackers, so the chances of someone finding an issue and reporting it to them to resolve it are kinda low.

Not if the bounty is high enough and payable to an anonymous recipient (perhaps vis cryptocurrency).

I don't think state-affiliated hackers really care about money.

Good point, though I imagine a large bounty payable to an anonymous bitcoin address could encourage individuals within such an organization to divulge vuln info.

That isn't related to the issue at all. On Linux, you can have a TPM + Secure Boot + Full-Disk Encryption setup with the TPM schematics all open and you will have your SSD bound to your system similarly, which is good security practice.

It being a black box seems to be a seperate unrelated issue?

Not really since it generated the requirement that is the topic of the article in the first place.

For example, if it wasn't a black box it could be re-configured with alternative firmware negating this requirement.

Not that I'm interested in such a thing, but I can see how it would have value to a non-trivial group of users.

I guess it depends how we're defining "black box".

T2 and its firmware could be completely open source - arguably its no longer a "black box" because its completely transparent now - but unless you have the keys you still can't reprogram it.

And you should have all the keys for a device you bought. It should be a legal requirement.

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