[Arm-netbook] AMD considering releasing the PSP

[Albert ARIBAUD]

Bonjour,

Le Sun, 12 Mar 2017 21:31:27 +0200
Bill Kontos <vkontogpls at gmail.com> a écrit:

> One can argue of going the signed firmware route for security is a
> good or a bad practice and I agree with you that the unbrickable
> design of the A20 is a better one, but that is irrelevant in the case
> of Ryzen chips: They have already been taped out so we have to work
> with what we are given.

Which, some would argue, is the reason why they should have thought,
long before tapeout, of a (re)programmable key mechanism instead of a
ROMed or OTP one. It would have made it possible to write a secret key
in the device and be sure it won't be read back [1], while preventing
said device from being locked-out or bricked, because you can always
mass-erase it back to "no key" state. (that's what's done on Kinetis
SoCs for the whole internal flash, to give one example, although
they /do/ offer a way to lock the device completely if some manager
really wants that despite the repeated warnings from his tech people).

[1] Barring any cracking of the device's security, but that's a risk
for ROMmed keys too.

Amicalement,
-- 
Albert.