MESSAGE
| DATE | 2015-11-08 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Re: [Hangout-NYLXS] Fun with FUD in the largest Washington Post
|
On 11/08/2015 10:47 AM, Rick Moen wrote:
> Quoting Ruben Safir (ruben-at-mrbrklyn.com):
>
>> Linux sucks... hat is he short version
>
> Extremely useful. Thanks!
>
> _______________________________________________
> hangout mailing list
> hangout-at-nylxs.com
> http://www.nylxs.com/
>
Torvalds blasts Howells, Garrett over secure boot
Torvalds blasts Howells, Garrett over secure boot
27 February 2013
By Sam Varghese
Published in Open Sauce
Torvalds blasts Howells, Garrett over secure boot
A push by Red Hat kernel developer David Howells and ex-Red Hat
developer Matthew Garrett to get code supporting secure boot merged into
the mainline kernel to meet some of Microsoft's requirements has led to
a sharp rebuke from Linux creator Linus Torvalds.
Howell made a request for a patchset to be pulled into the mainline
kernel last Thursday, writing, "It (the patchset) provides a facility by
which keys can be added dynamically to a kernel that is running in
secure-boot mode.
"To permit a key to be loaded under such a condition, we require that
the new key be signed by a key that we already have (and trust) - where
keys that we "already have" could include those embedded in the kernel,
those in the UEFI database and those in cryptographic hardware."
Secure boot is a feature of the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface,
the replacement for the BIOS. Microsoft has implemented secure boot on
all hardware that is pre-installed with Windows 8, hence anyone looking
to boot an image on such hardware would need to obtain a key from Microsoft.
Garrett has developed a first-stage bootloader to facilitate the process
of Linux distributions booting on a device which has secure boot
enabled. The Linux Foundation's James Bottomley has also developed a
first-stage bootloader.
Booting is, however, just the first step for Linux systems that wish to
keep running on hardware that is secure boot-enabled. Beyond merely
booting, a Linux system also needs to be able to handle hibernation
properly so that the image that returns from hibernation is trusted.
This happens with Windows 8, and not with Linux.
Further, the kexec system call also poses issues as it can replace the
running kernel with a different program. This could breach the secure
boot trust model. These two issues have to be sorted out to meet
Microsoft's requirements, else the keys issued to distributions by the
Microsoft-assigned key-vendor could well be withdrawn.
In his response to Howells, Torvalds was caustic, writing: "Not without
a lot more discussion first. Quite frankly, this is f**king moronic. The
whole thing seems to be designed around stupid interfaces, for
completely moronic reasons. Why should we do this? I already dislike our
existing X.509 parser. And this makes the idiotic complicated
interfaces, and now it goes up to 11."
Microsoft's signing service will sign only runnable EFI portable
executable binaries. The kernel already has a way of handling X-509
certificates that are signed.
To get around this, Howells wrote, "The way we have come up with to get
around this is to embed an X.509 certificate containing the key in a
section called '.keylist' in an EFI PE binary and then get the binary
signed by Microsoft."
Garrett then piped up in support, saying, "There's only one signing
authority, and they only sign PE binaries."
Torvalds went ballistic. "Guys, this is not a d**k-sucking contest," he
wrote. "If you want to parse PE binaries, go right ahead. If Red Hat
wants to deep-throat Microsoft, that's *your* issue. That has nothing
what-so-ever to do with the kernel I maintain. It's trivial for you guys
to have a signing machine that parses the PE binary, verifies the
signatures, and signs the resulting keys with your own key. You already
wrote the code, for chissake (sic), it's in that f**king pull request.
"Why should *I* care? Why should the kernel care about some idiotic 'we
only sign PE binaries' stupidity? We support X.509, which is the
standard for signing. Do this in user land on a trusted machine. There
is zero excuse for doing it in the kernel."
Garrett responded: "There's one significant practical awkwardness, which
is that it makes key revocation a multi-step process - the blacklisted
hash is going to be for the PE and not the key itself. I guess the
original hash could be stuffed in some metadata in the key, but urgh.
"Vendors want to ship keys that have been signed by a trusted party.
Right now the only one that fits the bill is Microsoft, because
apparently the only thing vendors love more than shitty firmware is
following Microsoft specs. The equivalent isn't just Red Hat (or anyone
else) programmatically re-signing those keys, it's re-signing those keys
with a key that's trusted by the upstream kernel. Would you be willing
to carry a default trusted key if some sucker/upstanding and trustworthy
member of society hosted a re-signing service? Or should we just assume
that anyone who wants to ship external modules is a f**king idiot and
deserves to be miserable?
"(I mean, *I'm* fine with the idea that they're f**king idiots and
deserve to be miserable, but apparently there's people who think this is
a vital part of a business model)."
Torvalds was unconvinced. "Quite frankly, I doubt that anybody will ever
care, plus getting me to care about some vendor that ships external
binary-only modules is going to be hard as hell," he wrote. "Plus quite
frankly, signing random kernel vendor modules (indirectly) with a MS key
is f**king stupid to begin with.
"In other words, I really don't see why we should bend over backwards,
when there really is no reason to. It's adding stupid code to the kernel
only to encourage stupidities in other people.
"Seriously, if somebody wants to make a binary module for Fedora 18 or
whatever, they should go to Red Hat and ask whether RH is willing to
sign their key. And the whole 'no, we only think it makes sense to trust
MS keys' argument is so f**king stupid that if somebody really brings
that up, I can only throw my hands up and say 'whatever'.
"In other words, none of this makes me think that we should do stupid
things just to perpetuate the stupidity. And I don't believe in the
argument to begin with."
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