Intrinsically/semantically no but the expectation is that the texts are encrypted at rest and the keys are password and/or tpm+biometric protected. That’s just how this works at this point. Also that’s the government standard for literally everything from handheld devices to satellites (yes, actually).
At this point one of the most likely threat vectors is someone just taking your shit. Things like border crossings, rubber stamped search warrants, cops raid your house because your roommate pissed them off, protests, needing to go home from work near a protest, on and on.
If the hardware signatures don’t match, it wont boot without giving a warning. If the TPM/Secure Enclave is replaced/removed/modified, it will not boot without giving a warning.
TPM isn’t all that reliable. You will have people upgrading their pc, or windows update updating their bios, or any number of other reasons reset their tpm keys, and currently nothing will happen. In effect people would see Signal completely break and loose all their data, often seemingly for no reason.
Talking to windows or through it to the TPM also seems sketchy.
In the current state of Windows, the sensible choice is to leave hardware-based encryption to the OS in the form of disk encryption, unfortunate as it is. The great number of people who loose data or have to recover their backup disk encryption key from their Microsoft account tells how easily that system is disturbed (And that Microsoft has the decryption keys for your encrypted date).
Intrinsically/semantically no but the expectation is that the texts are encrypted at rest and the keys are password and/or tpm+biometric protected. That’s just how this works at this point. Also that’s the government standard for literally everything from handheld devices to satellites (yes, actually).
At this point one of the most likely threat vectors is someone just taking your shit. Things like border crossings, rubber stamped search warrants, cops raid your house because your roommate pissed them off, protests, needing to go home from work near a protest, on and on.
If your device is turned on and you are logged in, your data is no longer at rest.
Signal data will be encrypted if your disk is also encrypted.
If your device’s storage is not encrypted, and you don’t have any type of verified boot process, then thats on you, not Signal.
True.
How motherboard refusing to boot from another drive would protect anything?
Its more about protecting your boot process from malware.
Well, yes. By refusing to boot. It can’t prevent booting if motherboard is replaced.
EDIT: s/do anything/prevent booting/
Thats correct. Thats one of the many perks.
EDIT: s/do anything/prevent booting/
If the hardware signatures don’t match, it wont boot without giving a warning. If the TPM/Secure Enclave is replaced/removed/modified, it will not boot without giving a warning.
Compromised hardware will say it is same hardware
Compromised hardware controls execution of software. Warning is done in software. Conpromised hardware won’t let it happen.
TPM isn’t all that reliable. You will have people upgrading their pc, or windows update updating their bios, or any number of other reasons reset their tpm keys, and currently nothing will happen. In effect people would see Signal completely break and loose all their data, often seemingly for no reason.
Talking to windows or through it to the TPM also seems sketchy.
In the current state of Windows, the sensible choice is to leave hardware-based encryption to the OS in the form of disk encryption, unfortunate as it is. The great number of people who loose data or have to recover their backup disk encryption key from their Microsoft account tells how easily that system is disturbed (And that Microsoft has the decryption keys for your encrypted date).