Wiring DRM into the system

Wiring DRM into the system

Posted Aug 4, 2005 19:02 UTC (Thu) by jonabbey (subscriber, #2736)
In reply to: Wiring DRM into the system by MathFox
Parent article: Wiring DRM into the system

A more interesting question is the relationship between private and public keys. To wit, is a private key considered in some way necessary source for a matching public key embedded in a Linux kernel?

I don't see any other reason why a Linux kernel could not be legally made to run only signed binaries. The public key used to verify the signatures would have to be made available under the GPL, obviously, but possession of that public key wouldn't make it possible to produce binaries that such an (unmodified) kernel would load and run.

So, if the hardware were to contain a public key to verify signed kernel binaries, and the kernels that were so signed contained a public key to validate software to be loaded on that kernel, then you've got a fairly decent lock down of the software that can be run.

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