7 ms·

What other countermeasure would you suggest? If these countermeasures were OSS, would you complain?

knowaveragejoe 14y ago
I'm no expert - but shouldn't such countermeasures really be in the higher-level software side of things, anyways? Low-level exploitation could never happen in the first place if higher levels were secure enough to prevent it(another huge issue itself). The only other avenue of attack would be physical exploitation, and there's no real way to stop that(if it's in front of you, you own it).
- drivebyacct2 14y ago
  This doesn't make any sense. For example, Secure Boot can help protect against an evil maid attack against Full Disk Encryption. How would something "higher-level" be able to do this? People should take a look at the rather secure Xbox 360 to look at how chain of trust is established from the hardware through boot stages to hypervisor and OS. Were it not for a tiny mistake and literal electrical glitching of the processor, the Xbox would remain an impressively secure platform. Hell, it's one regardless. Secure Boot, or something like it, is necessary to protect your bootloader, and thus, everything else (See: Flame and friends). Quite frankly, UEFI/Secure Boot, itself, is not that bad. People are upset that Microsoft gets to be pre-enrolled but they seem to not point out that it's disablable, people can sign their own bootloaders if they want, or better yet, can enroll their own keys and sign bootloaders themselves for ultimate security. Even if MS were working with higher authorities they wouldn't be able to sign a malicious bootloader if you enroll your own keys. edit: Instead of downvoting, maybe you could explain how SecureBoot could possibly work without pre-enrolling MS keys, or how some other form of verified boot would work without pre-enrolling someone's keys. In fact, there's a whole consortium of very smart individuals who would like to know.
  - knowaveragejoe 14y ago
    I think the issue most people take with it is the ability of the manufacturer to lock down what a user could do with the hardware they paid for. In my mind it's similar to Apple's hold on the iPhone hardware(whether or not that's still the case I don't know, I haven't kept up on it in a while) - but with general purpose computers. Also, my mention of the issue stemming from the higher-level realm is founded in the idea that exploitation of a device's firmware can't take place without either A) physical access or B) exploitation of higher level software to work its way down. As I mentioned I'm no expert, so I don't know if there are other methods available to attackers. Please elaborate if there are.
    - drivebyacct2 14y ago
      I don't understand your point. If higher level software is exploited, they don't need physical access and not only are you screwed, without Secure Boot, you have no way of knowing you're screwed. Again, Microsoft is not locking down what you can do. It's a feature of UEFI that is there to protect users. The ONLY way that Microsoft intersects with this is that they have the privilege of being pre-enrolled on computers, because let's face it, 99.999% of people buy computers with Windows on them and they expect it to run. Not that they have to boot into a special OS, enroll keys and install Windows themselves. (Again, see my earlier post about how they can disable Secure Boot or enroll their own keys) With Secure Boot, your bootloader can't be compromised. Not even with physical access, not even with a higher level software escalation. That's kind of the point. I'm not sure how else to explain it. You basically named the only two ways to affect a computer, so I really don't know what you're getting at, I guess. Downvotes for explanations, jeez. If your takeaway is that I don't believe in personal device freedom, you're either not understanding the issues at hand, or you've conveniently ignored the explanation I offer in this post.
      - beagle3 14y ago
        > The ONLY way that Microsoft intersects with this is that they have the privilege of being pre-enrolled on computers, because let's face it, 99.999% of people buy computers with Windows on them and they expect it to run. Not that they have to boot into a special OS, enroll keys and install Windows themselves. (Again, see my earlier post about how they can disable Secure Boot or enroll their own keys) 99.999% of people buy computers with preinstalled windows. If they are computer-litrate enough to install windows, they are literate enough to authorize a new Windows boot sector (the hash/fingerprint of would be printed on a new Windows media or sticker). I wouldn't have a problem with Microsoft's preinstalled key if I had reason to believe this will work well when you authorize other keys. But so far, no manufacturer cares that anything other than Windows works on their machine/bios, and I wouldn't be surprised if adding more secure boot keys is somehow broken (the way a lot of BIOS power-management/apic tables are broken and no one cares because they work well enough on Windows) > With Secure Boot, your bootloader can't be compromised. Not even with physical access, not even with a higher level software escalation. I have a bridge in Brooklyn that I'm willing to sell for a good price if you believe that. Yes, it will be harder to do, but ... PS3, XBox, XBox 360, Wii, iPhone {2G,3G,3GS,4,4S}, iPad {1,2} and many other devices all have secure boots. And all have, in the past, been rooted by software or a combination of software and minimal physical access. (Of these, I think only the XBox 360 required physical access after two months has passed since the first boot exploit was released). Theory, meet practice.
- toemetoch 14y ago
  No, you want to be as close to bare metal as you can - and as soon as possible. Dedicated hardware is even better but you need to gain access to it as the first one.

I'm no expert - but shouldn't such countermeasures really be in the higher-level software side of things, anyways? Low-level exploitation could never happen in the first place if higher levels were secure enough to prevent it(another huge issue itself). The only other avenue of attack would be physical exploitation, and there's no real way to stop that(if it's in front of you, you own it).

drivebyacct2 14y ago
This doesn't make any sense. For example, Secure Boot can help protect against an evil maid attack against Full Disk Encryption. How would something "higher-level" be able to do this? People should take a look at the rather secure Xbox 360 to look at how chain of trust is established from the hardware through boot stages to hypervisor and OS. Were it not for a tiny mistake and literal electrical glitching of the processor, the Xbox would remain an impressively secure platform. Hell, it's one regardless. Secure Boot, or something like it, is necessary to protect your bootloader, and thus, everything else (See: Flame and friends). Quite frankly, UEFI/Secure Boot, itself, is not that bad. People are upset that Microsoft gets to be pre-enrolled but they seem to not point out that it's disablable, people can sign their own bootloaders if they want, or better yet, can enroll their own keys and sign bootloaders themselves for ultimate security. Even if MS were working with higher authorities they wouldn't be able to sign a malicious bootloader if you enroll your own keys. edit: Instead of downvoting, maybe you could explain how SecureBoot could possibly work without pre-enrolling MS keys, or how some other form of verified boot would work without pre-enrolling someone's keys. In fact, there's a whole consortium of very smart individuals who would like to know.
- knowaveragejoe 14y ago
  I think the issue most people take with it is the ability of the manufacturer to lock down what a user could do with the hardware they paid for. In my mind it's similar to Apple's hold on the iPhone hardware(whether or not that's still the case I don't know, I haven't kept up on it in a while) - but with general purpose computers. Also, my mention of the issue stemming from the higher-level realm is founded in the idea that exploitation of a device's firmware can't take place without either A) physical access or B) exploitation of higher level software to work its way down. As I mentioned I'm no expert, so I don't know if there are other methods available to attackers. Please elaborate if there are.
  - drivebyacct2 14y ago
    I don't understand your point. If higher level software is exploited, they don't need physical access and not only are you screwed, without Secure Boot, you have no way of knowing you're screwed. Again, Microsoft is not locking down what you can do. It's a feature of UEFI that is there to protect users. The ONLY way that Microsoft intersects with this is that they have the privilege of being pre-enrolled on computers, because let's face it, 99.999% of people buy computers with Windows on them and they expect it to run. Not that they have to boot into a special OS, enroll keys and install Windows themselves. (Again, see my earlier post about how they can disable Secure Boot or enroll their own keys) With Secure Boot, your bootloader can't be compromised. Not even with physical access, not even with a higher level software escalation. That's kind of the point. I'm not sure how else to explain it. You basically named the only two ways to affect a computer, so I really don't know what you're getting at, I guess. Downvotes for explanations, jeez. If your takeaway is that I don't believe in personal device freedom, you're either not understanding the issues at hand, or you've conveniently ignored the explanation I offer in this post.
    - beagle3 14y ago
      > The ONLY way that Microsoft intersects with this is that they have the privilege of being pre-enrolled on computers, because let's face it, 99.999% of people buy computers with Windows on them and they expect it to run. Not that they have to boot into a special OS, enroll keys and install Windows themselves. (Again, see my earlier post about how they can disable Secure Boot or enroll their own keys) 99.999% of people buy computers with preinstalled windows. If they are computer-litrate enough to install windows, they are literate enough to authorize a new Windows boot sector (the hash/fingerprint of would be printed on a new Windows media or sticker). I wouldn't have a problem with Microsoft's preinstalled key if I had reason to believe this will work well when you authorize other keys. But so far, no manufacturer cares that anything other than Windows works on their machine/bios, and I wouldn't be surprised if adding more secure boot keys is somehow broken (the way a lot of BIOS power-management/apic tables are broken and no one cares because they work well enough on Windows) > With Secure Boot, your bootloader can't be compromised. Not even with physical access, not even with a higher level software escalation. I have a bridge in Brooklyn that I'm willing to sell for a good price if you believe that. Yes, it will be harder to do, but ... PS3, XBox, XBox 360, Wii, iPhone {2G,3G,3GS,4,4S}, iPad {1,2} and many other devices all have secure boots. And all have, in the past, been rooted by software or a combination of software and minimal physical access. (Of these, I think only the XBox 360 required physical access after two months has passed since the first boot exploit was released). Theory, meet practice.
toemetoch 14y ago
No, you want to be as close to bare metal as you can - and as soon as possible. Dedicated hardware is even better but you need to gain access to it as the first one.