[Discuss] Fighting UEFI

[feenberg at nber.org (Daniel Feenberg)]

On Mon, 30 Jul 2012, Tom Metro wrote:

> Richard Pieri wrote:
>> Secure Boot is a boon to consumers who just want their appliances to
>> work.
>
> This is a valid point, but almost none of your arguments support it,
> because the above can be accomplished on a system that both supports
> turning off Secure Boot, and loading custom keys.
>

Can I ask what secure boot prevents? If I have a windows 8 system with 
secure boot turned on, I understand that only windows 8 and the latest 
Fedora will boot. But what are the restrictions on what software those 
operating systems will run? Will all such software have to be signed also? 
So no existing application will run? What abount code I compile myself. 
Will I have a way of running it on my own machine? A way to distribute it 
to others?

If Windows will still run unsigned programs, secure boot isn't much 
protection against malware. If it won't, that is a bigger problem than
has been mentioned in this thread, especially for FOSS.

dan feenberg