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Protecting against rogue devices with Full Disk Encryption and TPM
(news.opensuse.org)
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this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2025
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Automated TPM2 LUKS setup might be the one thing that can get me to switch from Fedora to OpenSUSE.
TPM unlocking FDE is complicated for me. I fully understand measured boot and support it, but it seems less secure to me than manually unlocking the disk.
Once the disk is unlocked and you’re put onto the display manager, I feel like there are many more vulnerabilities that could be exploited to gain access to your data.
With manually entering the disk password, the data is locked. You either need to brute force it or use the XKCD wrench method.
So I feel TPM+Pin is the best for security. Unfortunately Aeon, which is based on OpenSUSE and implements TPM, doesn’t support TPM+Pin. I think it’s mainly due to how poor and widespread TPM support is. It could lock you out entirely.
As I understand it the TPM is for people who have physical access. It prevents them from cloning your disk.
I think with an adequately long password (or an adequately resource-intensive encryption algorithm) you can secure your disk enough to prevent unauthorized access. But the TPM would prevent them from removing your hard-drive and shunting it into a super-computer (so all password attempts wouldn't need to be on the crummy 10-year old laptop CPU) so a TPM + password is more secure.
I've read the arguments and trust the people who know far more than I do about this, but... I just find it difficult to think of "unlocks automatically" as more safe than "is locked until I enter my password". I'm open for it, but it just feels strange to me.