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Red Hat Will Pay Microsoft To Get Past UEFI Restrictions
ToriaUru writes "Fedora is going to pay Microsoft to let them distribute a PC operating system. Microsoft is about to move from effectively owning the PC hardware platform to literally owning it. Once Windows 8 is released, hardware manufacturers will be forced to ship machines that refuse to run any software that is not explicitly approved by Microsoft — and that includes competing operating systems like Linux. Technically Fedora didn't have to go down this path. But, as this article explains, they are between a rock and a hard place: if they didn't pay Microsoft to let them onto the PC platform, they would have to explain to their potential users how to mess with firmware settings just to install the OS. How long before circumventing the secure boot mechanism is considered a DMCA violation and a felony?" Note that the author says this is likely, but that the entire plan is not yet "set in stone."
You say that, but Apple implemented EFI years ago, and then even helped users who wanted to install Windows or other operating systems via BootCamp.
Microsoft isn't scared of the DOJ. In the last anti-trust case Microsoft was found to have committed monopolization and tying and yet they paid exactly 0 dollars and 0 cents in fines.
I am pretty sure that if a hardware manufacturer like Dell locks out Linux operating systems
If Dell wants Windows Certification it better not do this. Per the Windows Certification Requirements, page 122:
MANDATORY. On non-ARM systems, the platform MUST implement the ability for a physically present user to select between two Secure Boot modes in firmware setup: "Custom" and "Standard". Custom Mode allows for more flexibility as specified in the following:
a) It shall be possible for a physically present user to use the Custom Mode firmware setup option to modify the contents of the Secure Boot signature databases and the PK. This may be implemented by simply providing the option to clear all Secure Boot databases (PK, KEK, db, dbx) which will put the system into setup mode.
b) If the user ends up deleting the PK then, upon exiting the Custom Mode firmware setup, the system will be operating in Setup Mode with SecureBoot turned off.
c) The firmware setup shall indicate if Secure Boot is turned on, and if it is operated in Standard or Custom Mode. The firmware setup must provide an option to return from Custom to Standard Mode which restores the factory defaults.
Maybe I should have quoted the paragraph before that too:
We explored the possibility of producing a Fedora key and encouraging hardware vendors to incorporate it, but turned it down for a couple of reasons. First, while we had a surprisingly positive response from the vendors, there was no realistic chance that we could get all of them to carry it. That would mean going back to the bad old days of scouring compatibility lists before buying hardware, and that's fundamentally user-hostile. Secondly, it would put Fedora in a privileged position. As one of the larger distributions, we have more opportunity to talk to hardware manufacturers than most distributions do. Systems with a Fedora key would boot Fedora fine, but would they boot Mandriva? Arch? Mint? Mepis? Adopting a distribution-specific key and encouraging hardware companies to adopt it would have been hostile to other distributions. We want to compete on merit, not because we have better links to OEMs.
So yes, Red Hat could have got (some) OEM vendors to carry their key, but they chose not to. Part of the reason is that they couldn't get all of them to do it, but a big part is that very few Linux vendors could do the same (probably only SUSE and Ubuntu). Whether this is just trying to make themselves look good after finding out that the other solution wasn't workable is up to interpretation, but they're right -- getting every Linux vendors' key into the BIOS is unworkable for small (or free) distros.
Of course there won't be a generic Linux key. The entire point of a secure boot system (even a honest one) is to not run whatever some random person put up toghether on the street. That does not makes it impossible for Red Hat to have a private key.
There's no reason you couldn't create a generic Linux key, and then only sign code that meets certain standards (basically do the same thing that Microsoft is doing with their signing program). The big problem is that verifying things is complicated and expensive, so no one (except Microsoft) wants to do it.
I agree that it would be preferable for a non-Microsoft entity to be signing the Linux keys, but such an entity does not exist right now. I hope one of Red Hat's priorities is to set one up, sometimes you have to just work with what you have.
And the reason Red Had had to pay Microsoft is that the MS's proposal only permits one key, so the hardware manufacturers can either permit RH's key or MS's key, not both.
One key per signature -- as in, I can't sign a bootloader with both MS's key and Red Hat's key. I can have both keys and sign one bootloader with one and the other bootloader with the other. They can -- and some vendors are willing to -- allow both MS and Red Hat's keys. The real problem that the one-key-per-signature (or one-signature-per-binary if you prefer) situation is that you can't use secure boot without trusting the MS key, since all of the included components are signed with it.
According to TFA, the money actually goes to Verisign, not Microsoft.
MS doesn't control the keys; it's just that they're the ones driving the requirement so no OEM has a reason to ship a system with security enabled and not have the MS key.
The requirements for x86 hardware are that the system must ship with restrictions enabled, but the user must be allowed to disable the restrictions or add their own keys. In other words, there is nothing preventing you (the owner) from doing whatever you want with the machine. If you don't want the restrictions, simply turn them off and install whatever code you like.
The only issue is that machines with the Windows 8 logo will be required to ship with the restrictions enabled and RedHat doesn't want installation instructions that start with "disable UEFI security" or "enroll the RedHat public key".
Other options they rejected are:
1. Get all manufacturers to ship with RedHat's key in the firmware (in addition to MS's). The manufacturers had no problem with this, but there's no way they could possibly find every OEM to get them to do it, and they didn't want to be in a privileged position ("install RedHat because it's trusted by your OEM").
2. Get all Linux distros to coordinate on a single Linux key and have the OEMs add it to their hardware. This is undesirable because nobody wants to be responsible for maintaining the One True Key, and even then there would still be OEMs who don't ship with it.
In the end, the easiest thing is to pay a one-time fee of $99 to MS and have them sign a mini-bootloader that can start up grub. That doesn't sound like such a big deal to me.
Note that the issue with having only one signature on a file is unrelated. That just means a user can't realistically remove the MS key from their system because lots of drivers will be signed with it. Allowing multiple signatures on a file would not change RedHat's position.
dom
> You're right, this boneheaded move by Microsoft is the best help they could possibly give for Linux on the desktop.
> Of course, that just not let Microsoft off the hook for antitrust violations, specifically abusing its market power.
> I can smell a new EU action on the the way, at the very least.
Unless I'm misunderstanding UEFI, that's not quite right. Contrary to the headline-hype, I believe Microsoft's OTHER explicit requirement for certification is that end users must be furnished with a way to disable it that's impossible to do by mistake, but entirely possible to do voluntarily. For example, flip a DIP switch, place or pull a jumper, enter a 32-character encryption code printed on a tiny sticker permanently affixed to the motherboard, etc.
Put another way, the UEFI rules won't stop a single Slashdot user from using Linux. Redhat is paying Microsoft for explicit approval so it can sell Redhat Linux to the OTHER potential Linux users who don't WANT to go through that much trouble to unlock their PC.
I'm sure Microsoft's motives with UEFI aren't entirely pure & MUST be scrutinized constantly, but so far, they've played everything by the book. They've guaranteed that we'll get a copy of the keys to our own systems, even if we'll have to get our hands slightly dirty to actually USE them.
Truth be told, I fear Microsoft less than the possibility of TiVO-ized Linux. God forbid, if someone decided to start giving away free laptops that are bootloader-locked to an Ubuntu variant and have advertising & "analytics" baked into the kernel & network stack, and eventually induce others to do the same thing, we're screwed. By 2020, we'll be in a position where a "free" PC hardwired to ad-supported Linux is "free", but a "non-free" "unlocked" PC costs $2,000... and can't play rented movies, run half the commercial applications out there, or access some paranoid bank web sites because it it's "untrusted". *THAT* is the scenario we have to fight like crazy and ensure never happens.
For the most part, Microsoft DOES behave itself in public. It might be grudgingly-good behavior, and it probably has plenty of impure thoughts, but as long as the EU and US are keeping an eye on it, it's unlikely to try anything blatant that would give it a permanent "hard" monopoly over x86 computing architecture.
As long as anybody can download Ubuntu and install it over a "free" copy of Windows, Microsoft is legally off the hook (in the US, at least), regardless of how few people actually *do* it. Microsoft would have to be completely *insane* to give up that magic "See, we aren't a real monopoly after all because end users can theoretically install Linux!" get-out-of-jail-free card. Linux is USEFUL to them. In the phone arena, Linux is practically a cash cow for Microsoft... they make more in royalties from the sale of an Android phone than they do in licensing fees when a phone running Windows gets sold.