this post was submitted on 26 May 2024
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[–] [email protected] 150 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (3 children)

Only for the IOT version which is for devices like ATMs, but it kinda torpedoes their argument that a TPM is hard requirement for windows 11.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 5 months ago

You're right, fixed that headline now.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

~~I've run~~ I run the IoT version of 10 on everything - laptop, desktop, VM's, etc, it's great because it only does updates 2x/year, no feature updates by default.

Licensing is handled by the scripts from Microsoft. If you're a large enough business, it would be worth the cost of the Enterprise licensing just in reduced support issues.

Basically, it's Windows without the bloat, which seems like a good thing. I can use whatever apps I want for photo viewer, etc, and no garbage on the system.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

(...) is a requirement for windows 11 consumer devices. :)

[–] [email protected] 60 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

If anything, it should be optional for personal use, and mandatory for enterprise. Not that they would come to this conclusion either way, granted that half of the workforce is busy putting ads into the start menu, and the other half are probably not doing any work whatsoever

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago

If you don't have TPM how can they do browser attestation and ensure you have no ad blocking software?

[–] [email protected] 33 points 5 months ago (4 children)

Rats. Leaving TPM off in the BIOS is how I've been avoiding it nagging me to upgrade from 10.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)

16 GB just for an IOT OS is fucking bloated IMO.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (2 children)

It's obviously not intended to run on an Arduino or something.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Um.... then what is it intended for? ATMs and POS terminals don't really strike me as IoT devices.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I still have a laptop running a (old) full kde desktop in 192 MB of Ram from a 12GB disk with lots of space to spare.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago

It's been quite a while, but on an older system years ago I recall it slightly nagging me about how the computer wasn't W11-enabled.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (3 children)

I've been curious about people who have been disabling the TPM. Where are you storing your disk encryption keys?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago

I'm not using disk encryption. It's a desktop and if it's every stolen I've got bigger problems.
Also, I presume that disk encryption makes it so you can't just pop the drive in an adapter and pull stuff off it, which I sometimes need to do with old, retired drives.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

veracrypt is a thing, encrypting drives does not need TPM.

Just boot using the good old Master Boot Record for a clean solution (The Veracrypt documentation gives a good overview). Veracrypt works with EFI too, but the EFI partition itself cannot be encrypted. You can even create a hidden OS, if you are forced to give out your password, theres still plausible deniability.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Thanks for the Veracrypt reminder. Adding that to my stuff to setup and document list.

Sometimes Bitlocker really pisses me off.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

You can run bitlocker without TPM using a usb flash drive instead. I think you can also store the key in your mind as a password.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Yes, but when they're on USB the keys are much more accessible. You can just plug it in and dump them.

If you're only using a password, the keys are stored in an unencrypted part of the drive, which can again easily be dumped.

Once you've dumped the keys, you can brute-force the passphrase offline.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I found it was pretty easy to get rid of the nag. I installed a different OS. For my development stuff that needs windows and I can't run with wine (very few tools) - I have a VM running a windows version with 0 Internet access. Fuck that company sideways.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 5 months ago (2 children)

All well and good for Enterprise folks I guess, but what about home users?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

What about home users?

I run Win10 LTSC as default for desktops, VM's, laptops. It's great - 2x/year security updates, nothing else.

No bloat, no BS.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Good for the people sailing the seas too. Yarrr!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

let's go GenTwo!!

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago (4 children)

This one big question around the T in TPM, has anyone found a satisfying answer yet?

T is for "trusted". So far it was easy.

But who is supposed to trust whom?

The only case I found plausible so far is, that M$ can now decide whether or not they want to trust your PC (against you, the user).

[–] [email protected] 16 points 5 months ago

I'm sure this is a meme, but the trust is proving the OS is not tampered with.
Like, if malware was able to inject a malicious windows update URL into the OS, and inject a malicious certificate that gets the OS to trust the malicious updates by the malicious URL.
The signature of the OS would then differ from what the TPM/CPU recorded during OS boot and what the TPM/CPU has hashed during running. This would indicate that the OS has been tampered with.
So the trust in TPM is that the TPM and CPU are working together correctly (which is certified during manufacturing), so that the TPM can then attest that the OS (or software or whatever) hasn't been tampered with.

So yeh, it's MS (or whatever software company) trusting that the software it is interacting with is running as it is intended

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Honestly, the user is the biggest security risk in the first place. People run all kinds of malware and put their passwords into phishing sites all the time. One thing a TPM is used for is secure boot, which prevents malware from inserting its own bootloader to take over the OS.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

the user is the biggest security risk

Of course LOL

The user of a hammer is the only one who can destroy the hammer. Humans on the planet's surface are the only ones who can destroy the planet... we should definitely separate the human user from his rights and freedom, shouldn't we?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Interesting direction to go...

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

But who is supposed to trust whom?

12 years old and still relevant:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7WDbnHlc1E

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

https://www.piped.video/watch?v=s7WDbnHlc1E

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 5 months ago
[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The last time I tried to install Windows 11 on a VM (Nutanix AHV), I had to fiddle with a virtual TPM and lost the live migration feature as a result.

Dos this mean I can install the LTSC version, not need the TPM and have a working, live migrate-able machine?

Something to test next week…

[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago (2 children)

There’s a registry key (sorry I’m on mobile right now) that you can actually add during a clean setup of current non-LTSC versions that remove the requirement for vTPM and SecureBoot. That install should easily be able to be live migrated. We were doing that when first playing with Windows 11

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

Don't worry, I got you

Here's a link to the tutorial for doing exactly this.

As a bonus it also talks about how using Rufus you can remove the requirements by default when you create the install stick.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Thank you

I tried to find a link a couple weeks ago and I came up short

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Me too. Guess it wasn't there then.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

It already wasn't a requirement when flashing the iso with Rufus.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

Thanks I hate it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

So they are lowering the specs because people has found a way to avoid upgrading?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

They are lowering the specs for this one version that's only available to license to Enterprise users because it's meant for Enterprise level IoT use cases, not as a typical desktop.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 5 months ago

That was just a way to stop people from booting Linux. It didn't work. Microsoft sucks.