HTTPS Boot

UEFI HTTPS Boot

The security of HTTPS boot is that of the underlying Transport Layer Security (TLS). In simple terms, HTTPS boot refers to the use of HTTP boot over TLS session. So, please refer to the UEFI HTTP Boot for the detailed usage.

HTTPS Boot Getting Start

Please refer to the EDK II HTTPS Boot Getting Started Guide for a step by step guide of the HTTPS Boot enabling and HTTPS server configuration.

HTTPS Boot Authentication

TLS supports three authentication modes (RFC5246):

1. Total anonymity: the server and client will not authenticate each other.
2. One-way authentication: server authentication with an unauthenticated client.
3. Two-way authentication: authentication of both parties.

Currently, HTTPS boot feature only support server authentication with an unauthenticated client mode. Others are not in our current feature support scope. To support one-way authentication mode, server CA certificate is required by Client. Private variable is used to configure this CA certificate. EFI_SIGNATURE_LIST format is used for this variable. In sum, the Server CA certificate must be configured first to enable HTTPS boot feature. The variable name and GUID are defined as below.

#define EFI_TLS_CA_CERTIFICATE_GUID \
  { \
    0xfd2340D0, 0x3dab, 0x4349, { 0xa6, 0xc7, 0x3b, 0x4f, 0x12, 0xb4, 0x8e, 0xae } \
  }

#define EFI_TLS_CA_CERTIFICATE_VARIABLE          L"TlsCaCertificate"

TlsAuthConfigDxe is the driver to provide the UI to support the required certificate configuration.

HTTPS Boot Support Scope

• Feature usage: Load the specified file from the remote HTTPS server successfully and steadily.
• UEFI Arch: IA32 and X64 platform.
• TLS version: TLS1.0/1.1/1.2, version negotiation.
• HTTPS authentication mode: One-way authentication.
• CA certificates management: Private variable, protect the runtime phase security.

HTTPS Boot Verification

Tomcat, IIS 8 and Apache2 are selected as the HTTPS server to verify the result of loading the UEFI shell boot file (Shell.efi) in NT32 platform, detailed see below table.

HTTPS Server	TLS 1.0	TLS 1.1	TLS1.2
Tomcat	Pass	Pass	Pass
IIS 8	Pass	Pass	Failure
Apache2	Pass	Pass	Pass

NOTES

TLS version 1.2 in windows server 2012 R2 IIS8 (As HTTPS server) MAY NOT be able to collaborate with UEFI HTTPS boot client while version 1.1/1.0 works well. To make the UEFI HTTPS boot client works properly, we can disable TLS version 1.2 in windows server 2012 R2 by the below PowerShell script:

New-Item 'HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Protocols\TLS 1.2\Server' -Force | Out-Null
New-ItemProperty -path 'HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Protocols\TLS 1.2\Server' -name 'Enabled' -value 0 -PropertyType 'DWord' -Force | Out-Null
New-ItemProperty -path 'HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Protocols\TLS 1.2\Server' -name 'DisabledByDefault' -value 1 -PropertyType 'DWord' -Force | Out-Null
Write-Host 'TLS 1.2 server has been disabled.'
Write-Host 'NOTE: Need to restart the OS to take effect!'