Comment by vaylian

Comment by vaylian 5 days ago

2 replies

So much negativity in this thread. I actually think this could be useful, because tamper-proof computer systems are useful to prevent evil maid attacks. Especially in the age of Pegasus and other spyware, we should also take physical attack vectors into account.

I can relate to people being rather hostile to the idea of boot verification, because this is a process that is really low level and also something that we as computer experts rarely interact with more deeply. The most challenging part of installing a Linux system is always installing the boot loader, potentially setting up an UEFI partition. These are things that I don't do everyday and that I don't have deep knowledge in. And if things go wrong, then it is extra hard to fix things. Secure boot makes it even harder to understand what is going on. There is a general lack of knowledge of what is happening behind the scenes and it is really hard to learn about it. I feel that the people behind this project should really keep XKCD 2501 in mind when talking to their fellow computer experts.

egorfine 4 days ago

> I actually think this could be useful

Yeah it could be. Could. But it also could be used for limiting freedoms with general purpose computing. Guess what is it going to be?

> hostile to the idea of boot verification, because this is a process that is really low level

Not because of that.

Because it's only me who gets to decide what runs on my computer, not someone else. I don't need LP's permission to run binaries.

Phelinofist 5 days ago

I personally do not worry about an evil maid attack _at all_. But I do worry about someone restricting what I can do with _my_ computer.

I mean, in theory, the idea is great. But it WILL be misused by greedy fucks.