Windows 8 Spells Trouble for Linux, Hackintosh Users and Malware Victims

[Tom Ostlund]

The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers. -- Princess Leia







On Sep 29, 2011, at 4:14 PM, James Mcphee wrote:

Used to deal with junk like this on the thinkpads, where you couldn't add anything but approved hardware.  It was simple enough to simply overwrite their whitelist.  Is there anything to prevent us from simply flashing the BIOS?

On Thu, Sep 29, 2011 at 6:57 AM, Michael Butash <michael at butash.net> wrote:
Same deal as "secure" bootloaders on android phones that have been all the rage with vendors the past few years - it'll only boot a signed *approved* kernel.  I don't see how oem's will cope with this, unless they "pre-load" a cert from any/all vendors, lock the cert store with their own means, and everyone else is then screwed.  RH more or less enforces *their* kernels now, so they'll be happy, but I doubt any other linux vendor like Canonical will be.  Obviously the consumers, especially those that like to roll their own kernels, will not.

This was done in cell space largely at the request of the cellco's to *control* their hardware against esn manipulation and to sell them as platforms for the media cartels to hock music on (drm).  Since drm has all but become a 4-letter word of late, they've started shipping with unlocked bootloaders, or have implemented ways to unlock them remotely at the cost of voiding warranties (win/win for them).  It will be interesting to see how the oem's like dell, hp, and cisco that sell a lot of servers where windoze server is often NOT a default option anymore...

-mb



On 09/28/2011 10:03 AM, Tom Ostlund wrote:
This has the smell of proprietary hardware all over it again....

I would agree that they would turn it off or flash the thing either way
many tech support jobs just got job security :-)



On 09/28/2011 09:58 AM, Eric Shubert wrote:
http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2011/09/windows-8-spells-trouble-for-l.php



I would think that users could simply turn off secure booting in the EFI
(bios) in order to run whatever they like (except perhaps Win8). No?

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-- 
James McPhee
jmcphe at gmail.com
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