Microsoft Responds to Secure Boot Story, Doesn't Address Issue
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 23rd Sep 2011 22:22 UTC, submitted by kragil
Windows The story about how secure boot for Windows 8, part of UEFI, will hinder the use of non-signed binaries and operating systems, like Linux, has registered at Redmond as well. The company posted about it on the Building Windows 8 blog - but didn't take any of the worries away. In fact, Red Hat's Matthew Garrett, who originally broke this story, has some more information - worst of which is that Red Hat has received confirmation from hardware vendors that some of them will not allow you to disable secure boot.
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nonoitall
Member since:
2011-09-22

Part of UEFI design is that you cannot probe from OS side what keys are in the store. So yes it will be leap of faith at times if you try just putting up signed boot-loaders guessing what key works. This is about making attackers life harder.

So providing multi copies of the bootloader are not going to cut it either.

They don't need to provide multiple copies of the boot loader -- just multiple signatures for it.

Also once key is breached you don't want to keep on using it. Since attackers these days are after to place bootloader before OS so anti malware software inside the OS cannot detect the virus /bot/worm is there. Breached key equals exploited OS at core.

I think the significance of this threat has been overstated. Even with current technology, there are superior techniques for handling this than neutering the motherboard and locking out the user. (I bet if Microsoft simply blocked ads in IE with a comprehensive block list like the ones AdBlock+ has, infection rates would plummet far more significantly than secure boot could ever hope to achieve, but we all know they won't do that.)

That said, I still sincerely doubt that a compromised key (which will happen eventually) would be met with prompt action by whoever dealt the key. I don't buy the "we're doing this to keep users secure" line that Microsoft is spouting. If that's what they really wanted to do there are better ways to go about it.

If you can add keys you could just add the missing one remove the now expired one problem solved.

That "if" is the whole crux of the matter. :-D

Many windows machines are being exploited by malware/bot/worm/virus boot loader that effectively render all forms of detection of infection bar booting from different media almost impossible.

I still doubt the scope of this is as great as you or Microsoft say. Most (all?) of the infected computers I've had to work on haven't had their boot loaders tampered with.

What you said brought up another thought to me though on why mandatory secure boot could be such a pain. There are many ways a system can become severely infected without touching the boot loader -- some of which necessitate reinstalling the OS. In those cases, it's very helpful to be able to boot up from a LiveCD to salvage documents, and secure boot could stand in the way of this if there's no way to add keys or disable it.

The prime reason for this is not DRM. Its the rate of infected machines out there. Something has to be done when more and more users are getting infected and the infection not being detectable.

Breach of DVD and Blueray is not a major problem. Reason what can you make a Blueray machine do by the breach nothing. What can you make a standard computer do when you breach it.

List of items.
Send spam
DDOS attack
Infect Others
Steal Identities
Steal person money and many other evils.

A boot loader infection is not required to achieve any of those things you listed. Heck, root/administrator access isn't even required. A good percentage of the infections I've seen have never even left the confines of the user's home directory. So again, I call foul on this being for the users' benefit. And when you think in terms of it being for the industry's benefit, it compares with DRM quite well.

Basically if we want to stop OS being infected we need auditing from boot up all the way to user applications. This is many times more effective than anti-virus software. White listing. If only white listed stuff can work areas that can be infected are reduced.

Mandatory secure boot I have no problem with as long as I can add my own keys when I want to. And remove keys I know they are breached.

Most of the Linux world would not care either if they can added the keys required.

Simple fact here the rate viruses are growing its getting too cpu consuming to be working by black list. Items like secure boot based on public key encryption has to come.

So secure boot provides the promise of less anti-virus scanning required.

Most import is the implementation is sane for consumers. Microsoft current implementation fails the sane test. Insane to take too much control out of consumers hands and transfer to hardware makers.

I agree with the users being in control, though I still don't consider secure boot to be quite as crucial an instrument as you apparently do. ;-)

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