From: stryder@telenet.be.invalid   
      
   On Tuesday 31 July 2012 15:10, Jim Beard conveyed the following to   
   alt.os.linux.mandriva...   
      
   > On 07/31/2012 08:02 AM, Aragorn wrote:   
   >   
   >> On Tuesday 31 July 2012 03:53, Adam conveyed the following to   
   >> alt.os.linux.mandriva...   
   >   
   >>> Meanwhile, I'm wondering how long it will be before some cracker   
   >>> finds and exploits some vulnerability in "secure boot", rendering it   
   >>> no more secure than any other boot.   
   >>   
   >> They already have, by way of a "proof of concept" hack.   
   >   
   > Not exactly.   
      
   A quick Google search will tell you otherwise. ;-)   
      
   > The importance of secure boot is sufficient that I am confident   
   > the UEFI BIOS has been modeled as a state machine and proven   
   > logically secure.   
      
   They said the same thing about Microsoft Windows.  That's why Gary   
   McKinnon is now facing extradition on the grounds of charges which he   
   never committed, because he discovered something he wasn't supposed to.   
      
   > That leaves a couple of approaches, neither of which is likely to   
   > be useful.  One would be for the keys to become public knowledge.   
      
   Verisign has already been cracked, not too long ago even, with as a   
   result that a bunch of unusable keys were issued.   
      
   >   The public key will be distributed openly, of course, but the   
   > secret key is likely to be tightly held and not real likely to be   
   > broken by anyone that does not have more supercomputers on hand   
   > than he knows what to do with.  I doubt that is true for anyone,   
   > as yet.   
      
   The biggest botnets on the planet have a total computing power which way   
   exceeds that of the biggest supercomputers in the world.  And we all   
   know who controls the botnets.   
      
   > The second approach is to somehow force modification of the   
   > hardware in a manner that will allow bypassing the key without   
   > triggering detection by the UEFI safeguards.  I speculate that   
   > would be very difficult if you had physical control of the   
   > machine and unlimited time to tinker with it, and very close to   
   > impossible to do remotely.   
      
   I'm not sure /how/ Secure Boot was cracked.  All I know is that it was.   
   -)   
      
   --   
   = Aragorn =   
   (registered GNU/Linux user #223157)   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)