Id like to hear thoughts. Of course us gamers hate kernel level anti cheat, but is that actually tied to secureboot?
I know some/most distros can boot in secure mode, so it doesn’t seem like an issue there.
With all the new games moving to it, looks like we will all have to sit them out or install Spyware (microshit) to play. I will opt not to.
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I’ve avoided kernal anti-cheat basically forever on principle. On the plus side, there is talk about Microsoft kicking 3rd parties out of the kernal on windows, stemming from the cloudstrike debacle. If they kick out anti-virus, I can’t imagine that they let game publishers stay. We might actually see the death of kernal anti-cheat soon.
On a side-note, it’s a really sad state that so much of the world runs on computers but the majority of people don’t know the first thing about using them. It has led us to so many bad places today that I really didn’t expect when I was a teen…
It depends. If it’s under your control with your own keys then it can be beneficial. If it’s under someone else’s control (as it is for most people) then it’s a step towards the walled garden.
All secure boot does is ensue the binary (say, Linux or Windows kernel) run in early boot is “trusted,” meaning it’s cryptographically signed by a key the motherboard has. You can usually load your own keys and sign your own binaries, but I imagine only large orgs do that if they have a lot of Linux systems or something.
The way Linux works with this is they use a shim binary that is signed by Microsoft’s key, and that binary loads the actual Linux kernel. The kernel itself is not signed with that key.
The only way this impacts gaming is if games check if Secure Boot is enabled. If it is enabled, the game knows the system booted with something signed by a key the motherboard trusts. For most systems, that means Microsoft’s keys, but AFAIK, they can’t check what key was used in early boot unless the kernel provides some indication of that.
Basically, it’s an anti-tampering check, so they have some assurance the kernel is untampered from what the maintainer released.
Some newer distros like Bazzite are pretty awesome in that they install their own Secure Boot keys during the first time setup.
That’s pretty dope! I imagine we’ll see more distros follow suit as the September expiration of Microsoft’s keys approaches.
My distro, openSUSE Tumbleweed, does that as well, but I imagine plenty don’t.
Edit: I’m wrong, looks like they do that for “Trusted Boot,” but not “secure boot,” if this documentation is to be believed. It’s an option, not forced. I’m going to check later if it’s configured properly on my machine that I set up several years ago.
Did Novel git gud?
Apparently. OpenSUSE is going hard on the “we build quality” angle, and I’m here for it.
Neither Secure Boot nor TPM were ever actually about security and neither meaningfully improves security. They are DRM features that exist solely to ensure you can never truly own the things you buy.
How is TPM involved in making sure you don’t own things? It certainly improves security (other than the poorly made ones at least)
Um, TPMs for sure provide meaningful security. Maybe their use is implemented poorly a lot of the time, AND they can be abused to hold control over hardware you’ve purchased, but low level exploits are for sure a thing and TPMs and other dedicated hardware security modules (for enterprise) most definitely serve a purpose.
They’re a response to the ever evolving advancement of cyber exploits. Don’t knock them on principle, take affront to when they’re used poorly.
There’s the truth. Thank you.
Sticking to linux and indie games forever then !
Kernal level anticheat is invasive and the vast majority of anticheats are probably installing spyware with root access.
The biggest issue to me is that if you (the OS maker) wants a shim so you can use your own CA, you have to go through Microsoft. And they can just say no.
I think Tuxedo is still waiting on their shim.
For Linux, the protection is weak.
But if properly implemented, it’s good. But it would be a hassle to do and would require users to register new keys and blacklist Microsoft’s.
Measured boot is a better solution for Linux. It’s decentralized and does not rely on Microsoft. It uses the TPM to “measure” various parts of the UEFI, bootloader, and OS to ensure they have not been tampered with.
Measured boot requires secure boot to be enabled as one of its components.
The real value of measured boot is when paired with full disk encryption as it protects against boot loader attacks that can compromise your sealed keys.
I don’t believe that’s the case, according to Aeon. The state of secure boot can be measured, so if you have it enabled/disabled, you have to keep it that way or else the measurement will fail and the TPM will complain.
Never heard of that
Does “every” modern BIOS support that?
Need to read up on it…No, it requires a TPM2 chip. So the requirements for measured boot are to similar to Windows 11.
Poettering has a few blog posts and conference videos on it. And Aeon is a distro that implements measured boot as the default.
I use Aeon on my laptop, and I will say there are usability issues, but hopefully the kinks get worked out. Since installing in March, I’ve had to enter my recovery key and reenroll three times due to some kind of firmware update. This is on an older laptop (Ryzen 3500U), so I don’t know if it’s a common issue or unique to me.
Anyway, it’s a cool idea, I hope it gets more attention. The benefits for regular users are fairly minimal, but I certainly appreciate security for security’s sake.
Thanks!
That’s good to know.
As I need my laptop for work, I can’t really risk such experiments…Yeah, mine is just for mucking around at home. I mostly browse the web and play casual games. Nothing important is stored there, so if I need to reinstall, then so be it.
Ah, ok, gotcha.
Thanks for the input!
Worst part is everything has to use Microsoft’s signing keys, so it’s ironically a gigantic security hole if your threat model includes being on Microsoft’s shit list.
Only by default. You can load your own keys instead of Microsoft’s, and some Linux distros do just that.
Which makes this requirement even more meaningless because someone who wants to cheat by running a modified kernel will obviously know how to follow a tutorial to add his MOK and sign his version of the kernel.
Yup. All it does is restrict less sophisticated users, but surely they’d also be willing to follow a guide to configure it.
In my opinion its only useful against unsigned boot attacks and such,also you have to go through Microsoft for signing which is pretty bad if you wanna reduce reliance on Microsoft.
I kind of assume Microsoft’s real motivation was to make Linux harder to install, and the “oh it’s more secure” stuff is a happy coincidence for them.
It’s not all bad necessarily, but that “anticheat” vendors are demanding it sure does suggest it’s being used for nefarious purposes.
Except it was never about cheaters. It’s about DRM. You don’t own the things you buy and they want to make sure it stays that way.
Linux does support TPM and secure boot: https://wiki/ .debian.org/SecureBoot#What_is_UEFI_Secure_Boot.3F
So the problem is really only about kernel level anticheat, not the secure boot itself ?
It’s pretty pointless if you allow it to use Microsoft’s keys. It’s a lot of work to set it up to only use your keys and that bricks certain poorly designed laptops.
Secure boot is BS
Others have already explained the secure boot process. But one thing that might impact gaming is that TPMs also implement cryptographic acceleration in hardware. Not only does it speed up operations, it guarantees that the binary code for the library running on the chip hasn’t been modified.
Some anti-cheat libraries might require the TPM and having secure boot on guarantees that feature exists.
