linux-kernel - Re: [RFC] Second attempt at kernel secure boot support

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Date:	Sun, 04 Nov 2012 09:14:47 +0000
From:	James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@...senPartnership.com>
To:	Matthew Garrett <mjg59@...f.ucam.org>
Cc:	Pavel Machek <pavel@....cz>,
	Chris Friesen <chris.friesen@...band.com>,
	Eric Paris <eparis@...isplace.org>,
	Jiri Kosina <jkosina@...e.cz>, Oliver Neukum <oneukum@...e.de>,
	Alan Cox <alan@...rguk.ukuu.org.uk>,
	Josh Boyer <jwboyer@...il.com>, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
	linux-security-module@...r.kernel.org, linux-efi@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [RFC] Second attempt at kernel secure boot support

On Sun, 2012-11-04 at 04:28 +0000, Matthew Garrett wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 03, 2012 at 10:56:40PM +0000, James Bottomley wrote:
> > On Sat, 2012-11-03 at 13:46 +0000, Matthew Garrett wrote:
> > > I... what? Our signed bootloader will boot our signed kernel without any 
> > > physically present end-user involvement. We therefore need to make it 
> > > as difficult as practically possible for an attacker to use our signed 
> > > bootloader and our signed kernel as an attack vector against other 
> > > operating systems, which includes worrying about hibernate and kexec. If 
> > > people want to support this use case then patches to deal with that need 
> > > to be present in the upstream kernel.
> > 
> > Right, but what I'm telling you is that by deciding to allow automatic
> > first boot, you're causing the windows attack vector problem.  You could
> > easily do a present user test only on first boot which would eliminate
> > it.  Instead, we get all of this.
> 
> Your definition of "Best practices" is "Automated installs are 
> impossible"? Have you ever actually spoken to a user?

Are you sure you've spoken to the right users if you think they use a
distro boot system to do automated installs?

I've actually had more than enough experience with automated installs
over my career: they're either done by paying someone or using a
provisioning system.  In either case, they provision a static image and
boot environment description, including EFI boot services variables, so
you can provision a default MOK database if you want the ignition image
not to pause on firstboot.

There is obviously the question of making the provisioning systems
secure, but it's a separate one from making boot secure.

James


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