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digiowntoday at 4:24 AM1 replyview on HN

Ah, got it. With enough motivation this is still pretty easily defeated though. The key is in some kind of NVRAM, which can be read with specialized equipment, and once it's out, you can use it to spoof signatures on a different machine and cheat as usual. The TPM implementations of a lot of consumer hardware is also rather questionable.

These attestation methods would probably work well enough if you pin a specific key like for a hardened anti-evil-maid setup in a colo, but I doubt it'd work if it trusts a large number of vendor keys by default.


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tapoxitoday at 5:04 AM

Once it's out you could but EKs are unique and tied to hardware. Using an EK to sign a boot state on hardware that doesn't match is a flag to an anti-cheat tool, and would only ever work for one person.

It also means that if you do get banned for any reason (obvious cheating) they then ban the EK and you need to go source more hardware.

It's not perfect but it raises the bar significantly for cheaters to the point that they don't bother.

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