That's fine. It is indeed possible to perform a check for genuine hardware. (I'm not sure it qualifies as "attestation".) It does not protect you from malicious program-binaries and swapped devices.
Protecting against "swapped devices" is simple: put a secret key in the device, ask it to produce a signature, check it with the public key. Any device other than yours won't know the secret key.
I'm not sure what attacks you refer to when you say "malicious program-binaries". I'm having trouble imagining something fitting this description which is thwarted by the vendor blowing the programming fuse but isn't thwarted by you blowing the fuse yourself.
The comment is meant to separate the hardware from the protections possible in software. TKey provides a unique secret per device, that transforms into a unique secret per (device + program-binary + user-secret). So, protection against swapped device is possible, just not if you simply check if the device is genuine.
Programs are loaded every time the device is connected by transmitting it to the device. So, you could swap the program binary on the computer, and have it send a malicious binary. Again, a unique secret is assigned to a byte-exact program-binary, so this is detected in the process.
(edit: I'm assuming the device contains the original firmware. I'm referring to programs loaded onto the TKey once programmed. Just to check/avoid confusion.)
crotchfire|1 year ago
I'm not sure what attacks you refer to when you say "malicious program-binaries". I'm having trouble imagining something fitting this description which is thwarted by the vendor blowing the programming fuse but isn't thwarted by you blowing the fuse yourself.
cobratbq|1 year ago
Programs are loaded every time the device is connected by transmitting it to the device. So, you could swap the program binary on the computer, and have it send a malicious binary. Again, a unique secret is assigned to a byte-exact program-binary, so this is detected in the process.
(edit: I'm assuming the device contains the original firmware. I'm referring to programs loaded onto the TKey once programmed. Just to check/avoid confusion.)