'You have to divulge your private key' meme [LWN.net]

'You have to divulge your private key' meme

Posted Jul 4, 2012 13:10 UTC (Wed) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784)
In reply to: 'You have to divulge your private key' meme by robdinn
Parent article: The FSF's advice to distributors on UEFI secure boot

Despite assertions of paranoia by those who either have a short memory or deliberately want us to ignore the history of the industry, there are various malign reasons why companies might disable or intentionally obscure the ability to install different keys, all to give the impression that things were done "by mistake" and to let everyone point the finger at everyone else, leaving the customer without redress as usual.

If only there were the equivalent of the ITC patent "witchfinder" courts that Apple and friends hold so dear, whose purpose rather than acting to uphold monopolies on behalf of multinationals would be to act in the public interest and ban products from companies who treat their legal obligations with contempt.

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'You have to divulge your private key' meme

Posted Jul 5, 2012 9:02 UTC (Thu) by etienne (subscriber, #25256) [Link]

> there are various malign reasons why companies might disable or intentionally obscure the ability to install different keys

You mean, like changing all the time which keyboard key you have to press to enter the BIOS menu, displaying which key it is for too short a time, removing the PS2 keyboard plug, and delaying the USB initialisation so that it is very difficult to find the right time to press the key on a USB keyboard before the black-listed OS is booted and then refused and then power off the machine?
Hopefully shops will sell for a very long time those PC with windows 7 and a cheap offer to upgrade to Windows 8.

'You have to divulge your private key' meme

Posted Jul 8, 2012 1:40 UTC (Sun) by zlynx (subscriber, #2285) [Link]

I've read about a trick to fix the USB keyboard problem although I have never tried it myself. I wanted to, but couldn't find the right sort of device.

Anyway the trick was the find a USB device that takes a while to process so as to keep the USB initialization BIOS busy long enough to press the keyboard keys. Or a buggy device that locks it up until removed. Then you can press the BIOS entry key and remove the device to continue.