The much maligned “Trusted Computing” idea requires that the party you are supposed to trust deserves to be trusted, and Google is DEFINITELY NOT worthy of being trusted, this is a naked power grab to destroy the open web for Google’s ad profits no matter the consequences, this would put heavy surveillance in Google’s hands, this would eliminate ad-blocking, this would break any and all accessibility features, this would obliterate any competing platform, this is very much opposed to what the web is.
THIS IS NOT (just) ABOUT GOOGLE
Currently, attestation and “trusted computing” are already a thing, the main “sources of trust” are:
This is already going on, you need a Microsoft signed stub to boot anything other than Windows on a PC, you need Apple’s blessing to boot anything on a Mac, your smartphone manufacturer decides whether you can unlock it and lose attestation, all of Microsoft, Apple and Google run app attestation through their app stores, several governments and companies run attestation software on their company hardware, and so on.
This is the next logical step, to add “web app” attestation, since the previous ones had barely any pushback, and even fanboys of walled gardens cheering them up.
PS: Somewhat ironically, Google’s Play Store attestation is one of the weaker ones, just look at Apple’s and the list of stuff they collect from the user’s device to “attest” it for any app.
Not necessarily, most motherboards and laptops (at least every single one I’ve ever owned) allow users to enroll their own Secure Boot keys and maintain an entirely non-Microsoft chain of trust. You can also disable secure boot entirely.
Major distros like Ubuntu and Fedora started shipping with Microsoft-signed boot shims as a matter of convenience, not necessity.
Secure Boot itself is not some nefarious mechanism, it is a component of the open UEFI standard. Where Microsoft comes in to play is the fact that most PC vendors are going to pre-enroll Microsoft keys because they are all shipping computers with Windows, and Microsoft wants Secure Boot enabled by default on machines shipping with with their operating system.
You can’t disable secure boot if you want to use your Nvidia GPU :( though. [edit2: turns out this is a linux mint thing, not the case in Debian or Fedora]
Edit: fine, there may be workarounds and for other distros everything is awesome, but in mint and possibly Ubuntu and Debian for a laptop 2022 RTX3060 you need to set up your MOK keys in secure mode to be able to install the Nvidia drivers, outside secure mode the GPU is simply locked. I wasn’t even complaining, there is a way to get it working, so that’s fine by me. No need to tell me that I was imagining things.
Hogwash. Running Fedora on closed source nvidia drivers with secure boot disabled.
“works for me”
What does that even mean?! Yes it works for me. That’s the whole bloody point of saying it. Someone was saying “it won’t work for anyone” and I was saying “well it works for me”.
“We can’t land at the moon!” “Eh, we already have” “‘Works for me’, so that’s not really valid”
Head_scratch.gif
My experience is that Nvidia plays nicer without secure boot. Getting Fedora up and running with the proprietary Nvidia drivers and fully working SecureBoot was quite a headache, whereas everything just worked out of the box when I disabled it.
But this is very much an Nvidia problem and not a SecureBoot problem. There is a reason basically no-one else provides their drivers as one-size-fits-all binary kernel modules.
Source?
Me installing Linux Mint on a 2022 laptop with a Nvidia GPU (had windows 11 preinstalled, this was an alongside install). I disabled secure boot at first, but still had to go all the way back and set up my MOK keys and turn on secure boot properly with another password to unlock the GPU.
When are people gonna learn to stop buying NVIDIA products?
I used fedora in 2022 with an Nvidia GPU and used the proprietary drivers just fine. Perhaps there was something different between your system and mine. Newer GPU perhaps? Mine was a 1080.
RTX3060, I suspect this is the case for newer laptops, yes.
Never heard of this before and couldn’t find anything about secure boot being required to be enabled to use the Nvidia drivers with Linux.
But since you used dual boot you need to have secure boot enabled anyway, because win 11 would not work without it, would it?
https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=343833
You can search duckduckgo for Nvidia mok secure boot mint and you’ll see what I’m talking about.
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/535434/what-exactly-is-mok-in-linux-for#535440
This is about signing the driver when secure boot is enabled. It doesn’t say that Nvidia won’t work with secure boot disabled.
I’m using Nvidia with debian and secure boot disabled btw. So the statement, “Nvidia won’t work with secure boot disabled” is still wrong. Might be some Linux mint bug, but not a problem of Nvidia per se
fair enough, I had not tested any other distros, my bad.
I started looking at Mac’s for my next computer. Due to this amazing project. https://asahilinux.org/
False. Every PC I’ve had has allowed Secure Boot to be turned off, and some of them allow me to add another trusted certificate as well.
False. The Mac boot process is completely unlocked, at least on Intel Macs.
My Pixel 6 allows me to unlock the boot loader at any time.
Attestation exists, unfortunately, but it’s not nearly as pervasive as you seem to think.
Uh, there was huge pushback. That’s why even a Microsoft Surface won’t stop you from installing Linux.
GOTO 10
My point is that at least some smartphone manufacturers make phones with unlocked boot loaders. As long as there’s at least one such manufacturer, does that not disprove your argument?
On Modern Macs, the process is somewhat convoluted, but you are able to boot into a custom compiled boot loader / operating system while secure boot is enabled. It just needs a few minor hoops to sign the boot loader - steps that would be difficult to social engineer around but perfectly reasonable to do them intentionally if installing an alternate operating system is your thing.
iPhone is, of course, a different story. Hopefully that changes some day. The CPU and boot process is the same as a Mac, so there’s no reason it couldn’t be unlocked. Might require government intervention though.
Does that not create a barrier for entry for non-technical people looking to use an alternative operating system?
By doing that, you no longer pass SafetyNet, and some apps refuse to work without it. If unlocking your device removes features, then you aren’t really allowed to do so.
While I agree in general, and the overall sentiment/direction here to steer towards (morally) is clear… let’s stick to facts only.
Bootloader is unlocked and alternative OS exist. Or what else did you mean by that?
Macs with the T2 could be configured to unlock the bootloader, but from my understanding, the new Apple Silicon Macs (M1, M2) come with the bootloader locked.
Your understanding is incorrect, I think.
Apple specifically chose to leave it (or some part of the chain, I don’t actually know, not an expert lol) open, otherwise, a project like Asahi Linux would not have had a chance from the getgo.
I might try to read up on it when I find the time whether they still have to rely on something signed by Apple before being able to take over in the boot process.
I see.
I was going on the fact that the T2 has a “No Security” option for its Secure Boot config, while according to Apple Support the Apple Silicon ones (I don’t have one) only offer “Full” or “Reduced” security, which would still require signing: Change security settings on the startup disk of a Mac with Apple silicon
Dunno how the Asahi folks are planning on doing it, but they do indeed say there is no bootlock 🤔
Update: according to the Asahi docs, I seem to understand that Apple Silicon devices allow creating some sort of “OS containers” that can be chosen to boot from separately from the Mac OS one, and in such a custom container the security can be set to “permissive” limited to that container: https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Open-OS-Ecosystem-on-Apple-Silicon-Macs Interesting.
Yep, that’s a fitting term. You definitely still have to rely on macOS (and keep a copy of it around, e.g. for firmware upgrades, which of course basically only come bundled with macOS versions), but other than that, you can do more or less what you want to – as long as you’re outside of it.
I quite like this idea though if I’m being honest, normie users get all the hardened security from the regular boot chain without experiencing basically any difference/downsides, while hardware enthusiasts and (Linux) tinkerers still have options open (well, options that you can get if you have a new chip on a rarer architecture with previously no third party OS).