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Comment by ACCount36 | Hacker News Reader

Who controls the fucking certs?

"My computer was compromised with an early boot stage hypervisor backdoor" happens basically never. It's an attack vector that exists almost entirely in the minds of infosec fucktards.

"My brand new device ships with vendor-selected boot certificates that can't be changed, can't be overridden, and control what software I can install onto my own device" happens with every other smartphone, gaming console, car, and even some PCs.

"Trusted Computing" is, and always was, about making sure that the user doesn't actually own his device. This is the real, tangible attack vector - and the target of this attack is user freedom and choice.

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> Who controls the fucking certs?

Cert authorities, just like in case of SSL. Is SSL also an evil technology designed to take away freedom from the internet?

> vendor-selected boot certificates that can't be changed

That's a lie. Certain drivers are signed with a specific key, and they can only be used when this key is installed, which makes sense. The same thing happens with SSL - if you remove pre-installed CA certs from your device, HTTPS sites will stop working. However, nothing is stopping you from adding your own keys to the system and signing your own software with it.

> happens with every other smartphone, gaming console, car, and even some PCs

How often are you trying to install custom drivers on a smartphone, console or car? Why would you have secure boot issues on those?

> the target of this attack is user freedom and choice.

Which is exactly why users have the freedom and choice to just disable Secure Boot?

Take an iPhone or a Switch. Then disable Secure Boot on it. Good fucking luck.

The reason why Apple or Nintendo go out of their way to make this impossible isn't user security. It's the "security" of their 30% App Store cut.

Out in the wild, Secure Boot exists to "secure" vendor revenue streams - and PCs are the only devices where it's even possible for the user to disable it. Most of the time.

What's happening in smartphone space is enough of a reason to treat Secure Boot on PC like an ongoing attack. The only reason why there are still legitimate ways to disable or adjust it is that most PC manufacturers don't have their own app store.

Freedom vs safety should be contextual. I’m not free if I don’t have choices and secure boot is a choice. Having it improves both my freedom and security somewhat. I want both unlocked and locked hardware, for different purposes.

Secure Boot is almost never a choice. It's just something a hardware vendor hits you with, whether you like it or not.

It’s a choice I make all the time. I disabled it on one of my computers just last night. I’ll probably turn it back on today. It’s easy to toggle.

Now do that on your smartphone. And then on your smart watch. And then on your gaming console.

Secure Boot being "a choice" on PC is an exception, not the norm. On just about every other device, the vendor is going to take a boot, shove it up your ass, and say "it's there to make your ass more secure" if you complain.

Secure Ass-Boot is revolutionizing device security.

> It's the "security" of their 30% App Store cut.

> most PC manufacturers don't have their own app store.

I feel like you misunderstand what Secure Boot does. It has absolutely nothing to do with userspace apps or app sideloading. It's true that you can't easily sideload apps on Apple devices - but that has absolutely nothing to do with Secure Boot, neither do userspace apps have anything to do with it on any other device.

Secure boot is what stops you from putting an OS on there that doesn’t have those restrictions

> Which is exactly why users have the freedom and choice to just disable Secure Boot?

There's some x86 hardware in the wild where the option to disable Secure Boot does not work. Which is part of the reason why Shim exists in the first place - it allows you to boot unsigned code with the machine owner's consent, even with Secure Boot enabled.

I had a Windows 8 laptop like this. Not only that, it rejected Shim too. Never managed to install Linux on it.

Weirdly I had to leave secure boot option turned off too after a while, because more and more games started to have issues with the nVidia GPU. There was a RPG I forgot the name, isometricish that would outright crash if secure boot was turned on.

> Is SSL also an evil technology designed to take away freedom from the internet?

If it were not for Let's Encrypt, YES!

Secure boot would not be a problem if it were trivial to enroll keys. Give me a big message like:

"The OS you are trying to run is signed by an unknown key

sha256:whateverthefuck

IF YOU ARE NOT RUNNING AN INSTALLER YOU ARE MOST LIKELY CURRENTLY BEING ATTACKED AND SHOULD NOT PROCEED.

If you are running an installer VERIFY THE KEY with the one your OS vendor gave you.

Proceed? (Add the key as trusted)

yes NO"

Amen. This is how it SHOULD work.

At least half the reason I have a Gemini server running (the protocol, not the LLM), but no web sever anymore, is that it uses Trust On First Use, like SSH, rather than requiring all the complexities of CAs.

Not saying all of the web should switch to that while keeping everything else the same, but in some contexts it is just nice to use something simpler, as long as the risks are known to users.

> How often are you trying to install custom drivers on a smartphone, console or car? Why would you have secure boot issues on those?

The only reason there isn't a thriving community of third party OS's on most smartphones is because secure boot prevents it. And no, users do not have the freedom and choice to disable it (except on a very few models where the manufacturer has graciously allowed users to use their own devices how they want).

<< Which is exactly why users have the freedom and choice to just disable Secure Boot?

I might be misremembering it, but initial plans for Secure Boot were less open. It was only the stink raised that resulted in it being an option.

<< How often are you trying to install custom drivers on a smartphone, console or car? Why would you have secure boot issues on those?

Does it matter? Is it mine? If yes, then it should my concern. But that is the entire problem with trusted computing and recent trends in general. Corps become operators, users are downgraded to consumers.

> I might be misremembering it, but initial plans for Secure Boot were less open. It was only the stink raised that resulted in it being an option.

That, and fear of antitrust enforcement. The only reason we're still allowed to disable secure boot, or enroll our own keys, is that alternative PC operating systems already existed and were popular enough, that attempting to restrict PCs to only run Microsoft-approved operating systems would raise serious antitrust concerns.

But we're still at a serious risk. Microsoft still has enough influence over PC manufacturers to dictate their hardware requirements, and it would only take them being less afraid of antitrust to require them to no longer allow an override. They are already making things harder with "Secured-core PCs" (https://download.lenovo.com/pccbbs/mobiles_pdf/Enable_Secure...).

“ . But not only were they illegal, like debuggers—you could not install one if you had one, without knowing your computer's root password. And neither the FBI nor Microsoft Support would tell you that.”

That’s what trusted boot is, as predicted in 1997. It will come eventually.

For those who don't know the source of that quote: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html which was first published in 1997.

> Cert authorities, just like in case of SSL. Is SSL also an evil technology designed to take away freedom from the internet?

Yes, the way trust is delegated in web PKI is absolutely insane as well. It should have been something more lilke DANE from the start.

[1] DANE: DNS-based Authentication of Named Entities

> Cert authorities, just like in case of SSL. Is SSL also an evil technology designed to take away freedom from the internet?

Can someone give a _rational_ reason about why Google, Microsoft, Let's encrypt, Go lDaddy, Cloudfare etc. shall be "trusted" as opposed to "Achmed used cars and certificates" ?

> Who controls the fucking certs?

You can? Delete the default (ie Windows certs) and import your own.

I think it is only required on x86 EFI machines due to some old antitrust rulings. Provided the firmware vendor actually implements it right.

On ARM for example the hardware, including some hardware shipping with ARM version of Windows, does not need to provide the option to add custom certs and remove existing ones, so AFAIK in most cases it is not possible.

I think you can do the same in the Tianocore EDK2 ARM UEFI

But yeah, many ARM boards don't use open UEFI firmware

Lol you never read about all the Lenovo malware fuckups, apparently.

Which basically are exactly what "infosec fucktards" as you named them warned about.

I do.

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