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by bootload 3535 days ago
"The new Macbook Pro is widely rumored to have a fingerprint sensor."

Wouldn't be happy with this carrying an mbp around with instant LEO access ~ https://duckduckgo.com/?q=fingerprints+iphone+fbi

2 comments

Sure, but the reason I ask about the implementation is that I'm not particularly interested in the actual fingerprint reader (which I assume I'll be able to disable).

If Apple starts shipping a Secure Enclave or some kind of hardware-backed crypto store it will enable a bunch of interesting use cases that are decoupled from the fingerprint reader itself.

For example it might be possible to build tooling allowing an AWS signing key to be stored in-hardware where it can't be scraped by malware on a developer's laptop. Same for SSH keys. And once you have those primitives you can build whole new protocols on top (eg, https://blog.trailofbits.com/2016/02/09/tidas-a-new-service-...).

I'm pretty sure you could turn it off. Even iPhones don't require TouchID.