Garrett: Secure Boot and Restricted Boot [LWN.net]

Garrett: Secure Boot and Restricted Boot

Posted Mar 28, 2013 19:11 UTC (Thu) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
In reply to: Garrett: Secure Boot and Restricted Boot by hummassa
Parent article: Garrett: Secure Boot and Restricted Boot

Most DRM technologies are theoretically breakable because they require the system to contain a secret but not to let you access that secret. Secure Boot contains no secrets at the client end. The failures of most Restricted Boot systems have been caused by flaws outside the cryptography, not the cryptographic checking itself.

The lack of a jailbreak for the AppleTV3 (and the resulting $130 premium that AppleTV2s command on ebay) is evidence that this can be done sufficiently well. Even the iOS 6 jailbreaks are forced to operate at higher levels than the boot verification - you can run arbitrary userspace code, but you couldn't replace the kernel.

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Garrett: Secure Boot and Restricted Boot

Posted Mar 30, 2013 1:45 UTC (Sat) by hummassa (guest, #307) [Link] (2 responses)

I'll let you in a little secret, Garrett: atv3 was not jailbroken because there are better, more open, options in the market, and because it is a very small market. If the iPhone sold in its segments as little as the ATv, people would just buy Android too.

When geohot first jailbroke the iPhone, he had to physically open the case. One of my atv1 had to be cracked open, too. But, having other options to run Xbmc+Netflix/Hulu, why in the world would one buy an Apple TV? Unless, of course, you want to pay two dollars per tv episode -- but I can't put the subtitles I want on it...

Garrett: Secure Boot and Restricted Boot

Posted Mar 30, 2013 1:56 UTC (Sat) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link] (1 responses)

"atv3 was not jailbroken because there are better, more open, options in the market"

That would be a perfectly reasonable explanation, other than the number of people willing to pay significantly more money for an atv2 than a new atv3 costs.

Garrett: Secure Boot and Restricted Boot

Posted Mar 30, 2013 11:42 UTC (Sat) by hummassa (guest, #307) [Link]

This is the minority like me: I *did* pass on the other options b/c I do have a reasonably-sized collection of thingies on iTMS... :-(

And I do think iTunesU is nice. Apple is *so* evil that they could hook me, even if I know it.