Microsoft is working on a new chip to protect the security keys used by a machine. The so-called Pluton chip serves as the successor to the TPM chips, but must be safer because the chips are mounted on the processors themselves.
The existing Trusted Platform Modules take on a number of security-related tasks, such as generating and storing security keys. System integrity can also be checked with it.
Security risk in TPM
However, there is an important security risk in the chip, namely that the TPM and the processor communicate with each other over a bus. A malicious person with physical access to the computer in question could theoretically read the traffic on this bus and thus obtain sensitive data, Microsoft writes in a blog post.
Integration
Microsoft wants to solve this problem by integrating the module with the processor itself. According to Microsoft, this would not only fix the vulnerability of the communication bus, but the processors are also better protected against vulnerabilities such as Specter or Meltdown.
Cooperation
To implement such chips in processors, Microsoft does need cooperation with the manufacturers that make the actual ones. The company seems to have succeeded in this, as the company announces AMD, Intel and Qualcomm as collaboration partners.
Microsoft has not yet shared a timeline when the first processors with Pluton modules will hit the market.
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