this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2024
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Found in the wild: The world’s first unkillable UEFI bootkit for Linux (arstechnica.com)
submitted 2 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/technology
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“Whether a proof of concept or not, Bootkitty marks an interesting move forward in the UEFI threat landscape, breaking the belief about modern UEFI bootkits being Windows-exclusive threats,” ESET researchers wrote. “Even though the current version from VirusTotal does not, at the moment, represent a real threat to the majority of Linux systems, it emphasizes the necessity of being prepared for potential future threats.”

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[–] mlg 11 points 2 weeks ago

The Fedora doc on this is a bit old but it's still mostly the same:

Secure boot activates a lock-down mode in the Linux kernel which disables various features kernel functionality:

  • Loading kernel modules that are not signed by a trusted key.
  • Using kexec to load an unsigned kernel image.
  • Hibernation and resume from hibernation.
  • User-space access to physical memory and I/O ports.
  • Module parameters that allow setting memory and I/O port addresses.
  • Writing to MSRs through /dev/cpu/*/msr.
  • Use of custom ACPI methods and tables.

The implementation of secure boot is still questionable to this day, but it is understandable that it doesn't always play nice with Linux. I do believe you can use hibernate now as long as you have an encrypted swap (LUKS).

I can definitely see the pain if you happen to be a kernel dev or use linux on any SBC with IO ports you want to mess with in userspace and not make en entire overkill kernel module for.