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Signed bootloader without verification?Signed bootloader without verification?Posted Jun 6, 2012 7:56 UTC (Wed) by Richard_J_Neill (subscriber, #23093)Parent article: Fedora, secure boot, and an insecure future
Why can't we pay (once) for a signed bootloader which just boots Grub. Then Grub can chainload anything it wants. After all, a signed copy of Windows can still run unsigned applications from within Windows, so why not have a signed bootloader running an unsigned kernel.
From a UEFI perspective, that would be a major "security hole", but who gets to decide when a key is revoked? If there is a microsoft vulnerability for a particular signature, doesn't MS get to be the one to decide to revoke the key?
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Signed bootloader without verification? Posted Jun 6, 2012 10:00 UTC (Wed) by jamesh (guest, #1159) [Link]
Matthew's article mentions that. If you have a version of Grub that can boot in a secure boot scenario but will run any kernel, then it can be used to subvert the system (e.g. create a new UEFI environment that claims to have secure boot enabled and then boot Windows with it).
While Windows 8 lets you run unsigned applications, it seems that it won't let you load unsigned drivers so that is a bit different to Grub running arbitrary kernels.
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