Re: [GIT PULL] Kernel lockdown for secure boot

From: Linus Torvalds
Date: Tue Apr 03 2018 - 20:02:56 EST


On Tue, Apr 3, 2018 at 4:47 PM, Matthew Garrett <mjg59@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> Another way of looking at this: if lockdown is a good idea to enable
>> when you booted using secure boot, then why isn't it a good idea when
>> you *didn't* boot using secure boot?
>
> Because it's then trivial to circumvent and the restrictions aren't worth
> the benefit.

Bullshit.

If there those restrictions cause problems, they need to be fixed regardless.

In fact, from a debuggability standpoint, you want to find the
problems early, on those kernel development machines that had secure
boot explicitly turned off because it's such a pain.

And if they can't be fixed, then the user is going to disable lockdown
regardless of how he booted the machine.

In no situation is "depending on how you booted" a good choice.

Either you can enable it or you can't. If you can, good. And if you
can't, it has nothing to do with secure boot.

Linus