Intel Planning To End Legacy BIOS Support By 2020, Report Says (phoronix.com)

Michael Larabel, writing for Phoronix: Intel is planning to end "legacy BIOS" support in their new platforms by 2020 in requiring UEFI Class 3 or higher. Making rounds this weekend is a slide deck from the recent UEFI Plugfest. Brian Richardson of Intel talked about the "last mile" barriers to removing legacy BIOS support from systems. By 2020, they will be supporting no less than UEFI Class 3, which means only UEFI support and no more legacy BIOS or CSM compatibility support mode. But that's not going to force on UEFI Secure Boot unconditionally: Secure Boot enabled is considered UEFI Class 3+. Intel hasn't removed legacy BIOS / CSM support yet due to many customers' software packages still relying upon legacy BIOS, among other reasons. Removing the legacy BIOS support will mitigate some security risks, needs less validation by vendors, allows for supporting more modern technologies, etc.

Comments

Force secure boot on unconditionally?

[ReluctantRefactorer]

As long as the user can always install their own platform key, so they retain ultimate control of their own computer, then this isn't such a big deal. But there needs to be a standardised interface for installing platform keys in the UEFI settings.

Re:Force secure boot on unconditionally?

[Junta]

Well, one, SecureBoot is not mandated. Been UEFI booting since before SecureBoot existed.

Two, *if* it were mandated, using UEFI settings menu interactively isn't going to cut it, as large deployments need less manual attention. Some automation friendly mechanism is needed. The challenge being that it's hard to make an automation friendly capability that isn't also malware friendly.

I would have liked the mechanism to ship unlocked until an OS vendor installs, which would then have optionally locked the platform to that vendors or enduser keys. But instead we get the joy of Microsoft's keys being the arbiter of the whole SecureBoot platform.

Re:Force secure boot on unconditionally?

[butzwonker]

Looks like a false dichotomy to me. Why can't they make chipsets/motherboards that allow me to change UEFI settings (incl. installing my own keys for secure boot or switching it off) and switch off/on Intel ME by flipping physical switches, while at the same time offering chipsets/motherboards with less secure, but corporate-friendly automated mechanisms?

My guess is that they don't want to allow the first option because someone asked them not to allow it. In fact, I have no other explanation. Adding two jumpers and adjusting the firmware in an appropriate way doesn't seem like a major price point or technical obstacle that Intel just can't afford or solve.

As one who works at a vendor....

[Anonymous Coward]

Intel has set deadlines for the death of BIOS and they came and passed and there was still BIOS.

This time they seem a bit more serious about it, but the UEFI vendors are planning to continue allowing CSM so long as they have customers.

Intel NICs may stop providing BIOS boot roms, new Intel storage devices may be only UEFI bootable. It will get harder and harder and more and more cases will require UEFI boot.

UEFI boot has gotten pretty normalized, it's a bit weird to formalize vfat as a required portion of the standard, but it is better than the MBR approach. UEFI runtime services are not as good as they should have been, but they do however take some memory away from the OS that BIOS and BIOS style boot of UEFI did not have to reserve.

Re:As one who works at a vendor....

[wierd_w]

Low memory is also significantly less important on a UEFI system, because it boots straight into protected mode. Eventually, Intel will completely do away with trappings like v86 mode and pals, because they wont really be needed or useful, and will just be gobbling up die space.

What complicates intel's master plan, is that DOS (especially since the freedos project is very mature and has no licensing fees) is a very approachable target for many applications even in the modern era (Many things, from airport metal detectors to vinyl cutters, to industrial robots and pals), and that requires BIOS to operate. That you do not need to lug around a huge OS stack (DOS lives comfortably in less than 1mb of RAM), and dont have to contend with hundreds of multitasking processes (So your single task-oriented solution does not end up competing for resources or hardware events, because it is operating at realtime instead of time slices or having to wait for spin locks to disengage, etc) makes DOS a very approachable platform even today.

Intel just does not like that. It sees UEFI and their management processor security device model being the future in modern computing, and much like AMD, probably will only give up the keys to the management engine's castle after the vandals storm the place. (Meaning CoreBoot and pals will have to find ways to smash down the custom minix's doors and take over by force to overcome the designed security features of the processor, and hand them over to proper user control.) This is because the premise of the technology defacto asserts that the end user is not capable of being trusted with the security of the platform, and that only trusted persons or entities (orgs) can be vested with that responsibility. (This is at odds with GNU's philosophy.) Intel has many deep-pocketed orgs demanding this level of digital lordship, (microsoft *AND* apple being among the big ones), so the money is in giving the big pocketed groups what they want, which is mutually exclusive to projects like coreboot.

Completely Untrue

[Anonymous Coward]

'Removing the legacy BIOS support will mitigate some security risks, needs less validation by vendors, allows for supporting more modern technologies,

Don't twist the wording - tell the truth.

Last time I looked I have NEVER seen a bios attack, excluding published NSA exploits.
The correct wording would be obsoleting older devices and pathways that support unconditional video decoding, and preventing other means to turn off underhanded telemetry and back door audits.

UEFI has plenty of proven security risks including a back door management interface that cannot be turned off. UEFI is flawed by design, and is pandering to Hollywood generally.

The sad thing is that Raspberry Pi or similar will soon be capable of 4K video processing, as are some streaming boxes now, so Hollywood has already lost out to sub $80 boxes.

Re:Completely Untrue

[thegarbz]

Last time I looked I have NEVER seen a bios attack

Found a millennial. Those of us with a few more grey hairs on our beards remember BIOS modifying related malware basically showing up as one of the originals during the birth of PC malware.

That's to say nothing of the fact you've had your eyes closed to multiple cases over the past few years, to say nothing of the several that have been discussed on Slashdot in the past.

Re:Coreboot

[Anonymous Coward]

You should stick to secure MINIX, as Intel intended.

Why does it matter?

[thogard]

BIOS and EFI should only hand the boot loader an bit of RAM and boot image and enough extra stuff to load anther few megabytes off the boot source. I don't care if you call the BIOS something else like UEFI . Everything else should be up to the boot loader and the OS. I don't need the BIOS (or its successors) to test all the memory, just the 1st gig or so. If it is booting off disk, I don't need it to know about the network. I don't need it to know about the video or even the keyboard unless there is a problem. I only need it to know about NVE if I'm booting off that. The OS should rescan all the hardware and ignore anything provided by the BIOS.

Excessively complicated BIOS is a security risk not matter what it is called.