Principal at WebPKI.org
Somewhat unfortunate for Microsoft and Intel who have “bet the house” on TPMs (Trusted Platform Modules), all their competitors in the mobile space including Google and Apple, have rather settled on TEE (Trusted Execution Environment) schemes enabling systems like this:
iOS:
http://images.apple.com/iphone/business/docs/iOS_Security_Feb14.pdf
How come the competition didn’t buy into the TPM?
TPMs are based on a “one-size-fits-all” security API philosophy. Since Intel relies on external vendors supplying TPM-components this (IMHO fairly unwieldy) API must also be standardized which makes the process updating TPMs extremely slow and costly.
TEEs OTOH can be fitted at any time with application-specific security APIs which both can be standardized or entirely proprietary. In fact, even third-parties can crate new security APIs using GlobalPlatform’s TEE!
How about security? Since there is (generally) very little consensus on these matters, I should probably not dive too deep into this 🙂
The agreement between Google and Samsung is the latest sign of cooperation between the two technology giants, which dominate global smartphone sales.
