Re: [PATCH 00/12] One more attempt at useful kernel lockdown

gregkh
2013-09-10T18:51:52Z

On Tue, Sep 10, 2013 at 11:29:45AM -0700, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> On 09/10/2013 11:26 AM, Matthew Garrett wrote:
> > On Tue, 2013-09-10 at 14:23 -0300, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote:
> >> On Tue, 10 Sep 2013, Matthew Garrett wrote:
> >>> That's why modern systems require signed firmware updates.
> >>
> >> Linux doesn't. Is someone working on adding signature support to the
> >> runtime firmware loader?
> >
> > It'd be simple to do so, but so far the model appears to be that devices
> > that expect signed firmware enforce that themselves.
> >
>
> Most devices do absolutely no verification on the firmware, and simply
> trust the driver.
>
> So signing firmware is probably critical.

How are you going to "validate" that the firmware is correct, given
that it's just a "blob" living in the linux-firmware tree. If you sign
it, what is that saying?

I'm with Matthew here, any device that needs/wants this, has their own
built-in checking, nothing the kernel should do here.

Especially given that no other os does this :)

thanks,

greg k-h