[ale] OT: micro mini nano PC

[Steve Litt]

On Mon, 01 Feb 2016 06:25:42 +0300
damon at damtek.com wrote:

> >So....
> >Windows is so unsecureable they have to require hardware devices to
> >guarantee their kernel is real or else the computer won't boot. On
> >Jan 30, 2016 1:01 PM, "Alex Carver" < agcarver+ale at acarver.net >
> >wrote:  
> >>On 2016-01-30 09:31, Steve Litt wrote:  
> >>> On Fri, 29 Jan 2016 23:20:22 -0500
> >>> Chuck Payne < terrorpup at gmail.com > wrote:
> >>>  
> >>>> Intel NUC isn't just for windows, I have seen a tons of them
> >>>> running openSUSE, Fedora, and Ubuntu. As long as you can do a
> >>>> secure boot install, you can run Linux on them.  
> >>>
> >>> That lets me out. I use Void Linux.
> >>>
> >>> SteveT
> >>>  
> >>
> >>Secure boot can be disabled on the NUCs.  It's only required for
> >>installing Windows.


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> Well, actually, its to protect against a blue pill exploits where a
> hypervisor "lifts" the OS off of the hardware and at that time the OS
> does not know it is virtualized and the exploiter has complete,
> uncontested control and access to the OS. In theory it is OS agnostic
> and has been proofed in the lab. I don't know of any wild exploits.

Like so many other things, this is a tradeoff. Yes, secure boot
protects from an exploit below the level of the OS, and might be the
only practical way to do so. On the other hand, it restricts you to
software possessing a key that costs money. Worse, a key signed by
Microsoft.

No problem: The purchaser gets to leave it on or turn it off. Oops, not
any more. Hardware manufacturers can choose to remove the on/off
switch, and worse yet, that on/off switch *never* appears on their
specification sheets, so you guess and return. Or more likely, many
people are assimilated into the Redhat SuSE Debian Ubuntu conglomerate.

SteveT

Steve Litt 
January 2016 featured book: Twenty Eight Tales of Troubleshooting
http://www.troubleshooters.com/28