Re: [GIT PULL] Kernel lockdown for secure boot

From: Linus Torvalds
Date: Tue Apr 03 2018 - 20:08:40 EST


On Tue, Apr 3, 2018 at 5:04 PM, Matthew Garrett <mjg59@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> How? When there are random DMA-capable PCI devices that are driven by
> userland tools that are mmap()ing the BARs out of sysfs, how do we
> simultaneously avoid breaking those devices while also preventing the
> majority of users from being vulnerable to an attacker just DMAing over the
> kernel?

.. if that ends up being a real problem, then you print a warning and
tell people to use the kernel command line to disable things.

And if it's a big and common problem, then the answer may be that
lockdown has to be entirely OFF by default, and you instead just tell
people to enable it manually with a kernel command line option.

Still better than telling them to disable/enable secure boot, which
they may or may not even be able to to.

Linus