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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RE[2]: Pressure Microsoft
by redshift on Sat 24th Sep 2011 17:52 UTC in reply to "RE: Pressure Microsoft"
redshift
Member since:
2006-05-06

Ah yes, because what Apple is doing with EFI + OSX is so much better?


Yes it was better. EFI is technologically superior to ancient BIOS and closer to the OpenFirmware that apple used on PowerPC. Alternative OSs may have had to adapt to EFI, but they were not locked out of it with keys.

I would not mind the security enhancement in UEFI as long as the user gets a key to run their own code.

If vendors don't offer a way to turn off the feature, SecureBoot will be a prime target for cracking since it will thoroughly irritate people who have the skills and motivation to break it.

Reply Parent Score: 2

RE[3]: Pressure Microsoft
by Neolander on Sun 25th Sep 2011 07:02 in reply to "RE[2]: Pressure Microsoft"
Neolander Member since:
2010-03-08

Take it with a big pinch of salt, but if I remember correctly, Macs ship with a badly broken (and outdated) implementation of EFI, which gives headaches to everyone trying to run an OS which implements EFI support from the spec.

It is likely that OS X depends on some quirks of this implementation, both making it incompatible with PCs which run standard UEFI and making OSs compatible with standard UEFI incompatible with "Mac-EFI". That would essentially make Apple's EFI yet another proprietary firmware, which just happens to be based on EFI.

Again, take this with a big pinch of salt.

Reply Parent Score: 1

RE[4]: Pressure Microsoft
by MysterMask on Tue 27th Sep 2011 06:24 in reply to "RE[3]: Pressure Microsoft"
MysterMask Member since:
2005-07-12

That would essentially make Apple's EFI yet another proprietary firmware

What are you taking about? Apple never used proprietary firmware (before EFI, they used OpenFirmware which is an IEEE Standard). And they were the first big vendor to support EFI.

Furthermore they have no interest in looking out other OSes (E.g. Mklinux was sponsered by Apple). Why should they?

Blinded by Apple hate?

Reply Parent Score: 2

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