What is TPM?
Beyond being one of hundreds of chips on your motherboard that most people could never identify, TPM is rapidly becoming a mission-essential tool for most operating systems. As of this book’s writing, the average Linux system does not even require you to have TPM activated. Other operating systems, such as Microsoft Windows 11, actually require it for the operating system to be installed.
TPM provides mechanisms to securely store a variety of information securely. These objects can be (but are not limited to) license keys, user credentials, encryption keys, or other types of data that provide for the consumption of said data without user interactions.
There are different types of TPM implementation – firmware, discrete, and integrated TPM. TPM can also be done via software (aka virtual TPM) but it can possibly be worked around since it has no more protection than any other software programs running on top of your operating system. Avoid software TPM...
