Re: [GIT PULL] Kernel lockdown for secure boot

From: Pavel Machek
Date: Sun Apr 08 2018 - 04:11:00 EST


On Tue 2018-04-03 21:08:54, Matthew Garrett wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 3, 2018 at 2:01 PM Linus Torvalds
> <torvalds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> wrote:
>
> > On Tue, Apr 3, 2018 at 1:54 PM, Matthew Garrett <mjg59@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > >
> > >> .. maybe you don't *want* secure boot, but it's been pushed in your
> > >> face by people with an agenda?
> > >
> > > Then turn it off, or build a self-signed kernel that doesn't do this?
>
> > Umm. So you asked a question, and then when you got an answer you said
> > "don't do that then".
>
> > The fact is, some hardware pushes secure boot pretty hard. That has
> > *nothing* to do with some "lockdown" mode.
>
> Secure Boot ensures that the firmware will only load signed bootloaders. If
> a signed bootloader loads a kernel that's effectively an unsigned
> bootloader, there's no point in using Secure Boot - you should just turn it
> off instead, because it's not giving you any meaningful
> security. Andy's

Not true.

I have kernel with printk() enabled. Yes, once userland is started,
you can boot another kernel, maybe.

Maybe my kernel is locked down with exception of kexec, and it does
printk(KERN_CRIT "kexecing") followed by mdelay(5000). That's pretty
good security.

Pavel
--
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