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NO UEFI Secure Boot
June 22, 2012
5 Votes
Status: Archived
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I am not totally aware of what Secure Boot brings, but as much as I understand it boils down to my own (unsigned) code no longer being executable. Now, that would be a really, really bad idea ...
This might imply that the PC can't be Win8-certified, which raises the question about what OS should be preinstalled? I think NONE at all.
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Jul 8, 2012 Comment Link
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Posted By: thesheep
No all that is left to do is for Dell to promise to follow that Canonical's specification.Jun 26, 2012 Comment Link
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Posted By:
William_L
scalpel4k, thanks for the idea. Secure Boot is an OS-agnostic BIOS specification that guarantees that all firmware code executed from power-on to OS hand-off is digitally signed, so that the user knows there is no malware/rootkit infecting his system before the OS takes over. This is not an academic pursuit: such malware exists already:
http://blog.webroot.com/2011/09/13/mebromi-the-first-bios-rootkit-in-the-wild/
Secure Boot is not concerned with application code you write that runs in the OS.
Here is a good summary by the Linux Foundation:
http://www.linuxfoundation.org/publications/making-uefi-secure-boot-work-with-open-platforms
Canonical Inc. has created a UEFI BIOS requirements document which explains how Ubuntu will support Secure Boot:
http://odm.ubuntu.com/docs/ubuntu-bios-uefi-requirements.pdf
Does this allay your concerns re: Secure Boot?