Re: [PATCH v15 00/28] x86: Secure Launch support for Intel TXT

Andy Lutomirski
2026-02-18T20:34:13Z

On Wed, Feb 18, 2026 at 12:29 PM H. Peter Anvin <hpa@zytor.com> wrote:
>
> On February 18, 2026 12:03:27 PM PST, Andy Lutomirski <luto@amacapital.net> wrote:
> >On Thu, Feb 12, 2026 at 12:40 PM Ard Biesheuvel <ardb@kernel.org> wrote:
> >>
> >> On Thu, 12 Feb 2026, at 20:49, Daniel P. Smith wrote:
> >> > On 2/9/26 09:04, Ard Biesheuvel wrote:
> >> ...
> >> >> Surprisingly, even when doing a secure launch, the EFI runtime services still work happily, which means (AIUI) that code that was excluded from the D-RTM TCB is still being executed at ring 0? Doesn't this defeat D-RTM entirely in the case some exploit is hidden in the EFI runtime code? Should we measure the contents of EfiRuntimeServicesCode regions too?
> >> >
> >> > Yes, in fact in the early days I specifically stated that we should
> >> > provide for the ability to measure the RS blocks. Particularly if you
> >> > are not in an environment where you can isolate the calls to RS from the
> >> > TCB. While the RS can pose runtime corruption risks, the larger concern
> >> > is integrating the D-RTM validation of the Intel System Resources
> >> > Defense (ISRD), aka SMI isolation/SMM Supervisor, provided by the Intel
> >> > System Security Report (ISSR). Within the ISSR is a list of memory
> >> > regions which the SMM Policy Shim (SPS) restricts a SMI handler's access
> >> > when running. This allows a kernel to restrict what access a SMI handler
> >> > are able to reach, thus allowing them to be removed from the TCB when
> >> > the appropriate guards are put in place.
> >> >
> >> > If you are interested in understanding these further, Satoshi Tanda has
> >> > probably the best technical explanation without Intel market speak.
> >> >
> >> > ISRD: https://tandasat.github.io/blog/2024/02/29/ISRD.html
> >> > ISSR: https://tandasat.github.io/blog/2024/03/18/ISSR.html
> >> >
> >>
> >> Thanks, I'll take a look at those.
> >>
> >> But would it be better to disable the runtime services by default when doing a secure launch? PREEMPT_RT already does the same.
> >
> >So I have a possible way to disable EFI runtime service without losing
> >the ability to write EFI vars. We come up with a simple file format
> >to store deferred EFI var updates and we come up with a place to put
> >it so that we find it early-ish in boot the next time around. (This
> >could be done via integration with systemd-boot or shim some other
> >boot loader or it could actually be part of the kernel.) And then,
> >instead of writing variables directly, we write them to the deferred
> >list and then update them on reboot (before TXT launch, etc). [0]
> >This would be a distincly nontrivial project and would not work for
> >all configurations.
> >
> >As a maybe less painful option, we could disable EFI runtime services
> >but have a root-writable thing in sysfs that (a) turns them back on
> >but (b) first extends a PCR to say that they're turned back on.
> >
> >(Or someone could try running runtime services at CPL3...)
> >
> >[0] I have thought for years that Intel and AMD should do this on
> >their end, too. Keep the sensitive part of SMI flash entirely locked
> >after boot and, instead of using magic SMM stuff to validate that
> >write attempts have the appropriate permissions and signatures, queue
> >them up as deferred upates and validate the signatures on the next
> >boot before locking flash.
> >
>
> *If* a physical EFI partition exists there is a lot to be said for this approach.
>
> The only issue with this that I can see is for things like network or CD/DVD booting where there isn't necessarily any EFI boot partition, it might not be writable, or it might not be persistent (e.g. http booting typically uses a ramdisk, like the old Linux initrd.)

Hmm, I guess my approach is a 100% complete nonstarter for installing
Linux from a CD, and it's really not awesome for installing Linux from
a USB stick.