Ok, I'm not going to get too far into this, because I'm no real security expert, but:
On Jan 30, 2008 11:40 AM, Philipp Marek philipp@marek.priv.at wrote:
- Using some operating system unencrypted - boot from a CD.
- Protect the boot order - reset the CMOS.
- Store important information in the CMOS.
Neither is this.
No, this should illustrate my thoughts ... so you can tell me *where* I'm wrong.
Coreboot will unconditionally launch its payload, so your interest
should go
there.
That's ok. It's a "normal" OS that has to be started.
Maybe you are also caught up too much in the conventional boot process;
That's possible, and that's why I'm asking here! I don't know that many ways to boot a machine - use ROM; use a BIOS and another medium; and that's it.
Is there some easy solution I don't see?
And just storing everything in ROM is a bit ... costly, and doesn't help against *getting* the secrets. Using some cheap substitute like flash memory only moves the problem from one location to another ...
I think what he was trying to say is that if you give coreboot, say, a FILO payload set up to boot from some medium, with no support for any other medium, then there's no switch you can throw, short of flashing a new bios onto the board. You can do the same thing with a linux kernel, use that to unconditionally kexec to a specific medium, or with large enough flash, you could store the entire kernel in flash.
-Corey