I would love a world where I could put all my API keys in the TPM so malware couldn't gain persistent access to services after wiping my computer. This would be so easy if more providers used asymmetric keys, like through SSH or mTLS. Unfortunately, many don't, which means that stealing a single bearer token gives full access to services.

There's also the TPM speed issue. My computer takes ~500ms to sign with an ECC256 key with the TPM, which starts to become an issue when running scripts that use git operations in serial. This is a recurring problem that people tend to blame on export controls: https://stiankri.substack.com/p/tpm-performance

In some cases there is a work-around for bearer tokens. If they allow key/cert login to generate the token (either directly, or via oath), and the token can be generated with a short lifetime, you can build something pretty safe (certainly safer then having a not-expiring, or long TTL token in a wallet).

apologies for asking this question here instead of actually doing the research, but it always seemed to be that while putting keys in a secure environment would help against leakage of the private bits, there really isn't a great story around making sure than only authorized requests can be signed. is this a stupid concern?