The creator of systemd (Lennart Poettering) has recently created a new company dedicated to bringing hardware attestation to open source software.
What might this entail? A previous blog post could provide some clues:
So, let’s see how I would build a desktop OS. The trust chain matters, from the boot loader all the way to the apps. This means all code that is run must be cryptographically validated before it is run. This is in fact where big distributions currently fail pretty badly. This is a fault of current Linux distributions though, not of SecureBoot in general.
If this technology is successful, the end result could be that we would see our Linux laptops one day being as locked down as an Iphone or Android device.
There are lots of others who are equally concerned about this possibility: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46784572
I forgot already but doesn’t he work for MSFT now?
I swear the moment he got a new job is when he came out with run0
I don’t trust Microsoft, why should I start trusting IBM/Canonical or Poettering now.
If the possibility is there they will happily lock you out of your own hardware.
Who decides what SecureBoot considers trustworthy? If SecureBoot is controlled by someone else then it can be used against the user. The aversion to SecureBoot is justified.
Secureboot uses certificates to verify integrity. The user is able to install new certificates. So I’d say it is the user? I’m not an expert though and their may be hardware out there that doesn’t allow new certificates.
In the comments they clarify that is mostly targeted at servers and IoT first. In the enterprise world attestation is absolutely needed. And on personal devices? I’d be very happy if I had a secure boot chain for full disk encryption working out of the box. At least for portable devices…
I wonder if this would allow an anti-cheat system to get acceptable trust of a system without having to access ring 0.
Of course, we’d then need the OS / kernel images to be signed. I think most gamers run stock kernels anyway.
I just don’t want see the garbage that is the Android Play Store where apps refuse to run because we run an OS that isn’t profitable to Google.
This is needed. Servers need it, and it would be a nice feature to enable for personal systems. We would need to be able to build our own images with our own keys to really make this worthwhile. Especially with programs in my bin dir I’ve compiled or downloaded.
Do I trust Lennart to not do something asinine to turn this into a shit show? I do not. This would be better if it was someone who has security experience and system design cred.
I can’t imagine anyone sane would hold onto the belief that it will remain just “a nice feature to enable” after looking at the historical encroachment of commercial interests in mobile phone boot chain setups. I tell you the truth that after widespread adoption this WILL turn into a “not nice feature that you cannot disable”, and you can forget about enrolling your own keys as well.
Secureboot is worthless if the Microsoft keys are still enabled. It should only allow code that you sign yourself to boot.
If the end user can arbitrarily sign code themselves that is bootable then it kind of defeats the purpose of secure boot.
The whole idea is that it makes it impossible to start if the chain of trust is broken.
You’re arguing for protecting the PC from malicious changes made by you, the owner.
This is corporate speak. Yes, it would make sense to lock down a PC like that in a corporate setting.
For private use, the point is to secure the PC against malicious changes made by other people.
In this case, signing code yourself is perfectly fine.It keeps someone from booting code that hasn’t been signed with my key. That’s the whole point of secure boot. If someone else has the key, then it’s not secure anymore.
Because if there’s one thing Linux users think about their systems … it’s “hey why does this thing let me do what I want?”
There’s a universe of difference between changes you intended to make in your system, and changes you didn’t intend because a state actor attacked you based on your social media criticism.
Unlike with closed source software, you can always decide you don’t want your software to be secure.
What you should be worried about is not software but hardware.
Uhhhh…wha?
This would be a big deal for hardware manufacturers or product manufacturers in securing their devices. Only a tiny, tiny fraction of Linux users are just desktop jockeys.
I was referring to this
If this technology is successful, the end result could be that we would see our Linux laptops one day being as locked down as an Iphone or Android device.
What if the thing that you want is to have SecureBoot-enforced hardware attestation?
What if it was just an off the cuff joke?
This is too many dependent probabilities
That would be beneficial to users as well. I’m not understanding the downside here.
I guess you’re not thinking of “locked down” in terms of independent developers finding the iOS and Android “play by our rules and be distributed thru our app store or we’ll make it hard for users to run your software” to be a barrier to distribution.
Bruh…that’s not even the point of the company or what he’s talking about. You’re being paranoid, first off.
Second, you want secure devices? You can’t have that right now with Linux very easily. There is no chain of trust coming from the hardware aside from TPM, which is kind of a joke. This guy wants to make a standard way of certifying a chain of trust which would allow an ecosystem of devices to maintain some semblance of trust amongst itself and other devices. This would make things like networks, edge devices, forward deployed hardware, and running sensitive data in less than secure locations more secure.
Last, if you’re going to be paranoid, at least educate yourself on the subject. Not a single person who is even vaguely familiar with what this entails is thinking “Oh they’re going to lock all our devices rawrawrawr”. That’s just ridiculous. That could happen now, but…you seeing that out in the components world anywhere? Absolutely not. Because it’s no desirable, and that’s NOT WHAT HES EVEN TALKING ABOUT.
🤦
Sorry but this whole thing is just snake-oil.
You can verify and sign your whole trust chain down to the last shared library and it doesn’t matter when you don’t know what the binary blobs on your TPM / CPU / BIOS / NIC are doing.
The only guarantee to a secure system is openness an all of that signing won’t help you there.
Only being able to install “allowed” apps is not great for freedom.
Not even how that works FFS. You’re not the target audience here.
Y’all really need to start reading more about things before jumping to ridiculously uninformed conclusions and making comments. My gosh.
Removed by mod
Seems like more of a “you” problem for not understanding the problem or solutions being discussed. Seems like maybe you probably just shouldn’t have commented at all, huh?
Amutable are a gaggle of fucks
The anti MS morons who don’t understand secure boot and just regurgitating we hate this because it’s associated with them are out 🙄
