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by toast0 1817 days ago
I see the value in using a TPM to protect a disk encryption key; but also the downside of it being harder for me to recover data when the TPM fails before the disk (or if the motherboard fails and the TPM is tamper resistant and doesn't want to be moved to another board, etc). For me, data recovery is more important.

Boot time security sounds kind of useful, but I don't have time or desire to audit and sign everything I run, and Microsoft doesn't either; they have historically signed all sorts of garbage that undermines the system security, and I expect that will continue.

1 comments

I think this is why you don't store the encryption key of the disk directly in the TPM but a "key to unlock the key" - that way you can enter a recovery code or something to access if the TPM or something in the boot path fails. I don't know how the encryption mechanics work in detail but it has to work like that somehow for Bitlocker recovery to function. I know under Linux LUKS you can have up to 8 keys and each will allow access to the disk.