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UEFI SecureBoot on ArchLinux

⚠️ Note: this project will be deprecated soon, by the --uefi option in mkinitcpio and sbctl.

Rationale

I want full control at what boots the computer to avoid the so called evil maid attack. That requires setting SecureBoot with only my own keys. SecureBoot protects the computer from tampering with the installed OS and boot files, while it's left powered off outside our view. It's not a substitute for disk encryption though, it's an addition to it.

Quick Start

  • secure-boot gen-keys will create the keys in /etc/secure-boot/ - make sure no-one can access them!

The *.auth files must be enrolled in the UEFI firmware the first time. Unfortunately this procedure depends on the hardware i.e. the BIOS/UEFI (see below for a Thinkpad).

  • secure-boot enroll (experimental) enrolls the keys into the UEFI firmware using efi-updatevar from efitools package.

  • secure-boot update will update the EFI executable in /boot/Efi/Secure/secure-boot-linux.efi

  • secure-boot install will run update and add an entry to the EFI boot list for the newly created image

secure-boot.hook can be installed as a pacman hook (/etc/pacman.d/hooks/) that runs secure-boot update when the linux, {intel,amd}-ucode package or initramfs is updated. You can use that file as a template for other kernels too (this procedure should converge to systemds kernel-install).

Configuration

Options can be put in /etc/secure-boot/config.mk (in makefile format). See the top lines of secure-boot for the possible options. You can also specify them on the command line:

  • secure-boot KERNEL=linux-lts update will sign and setup the -lts kernel (also linux-git, linux-zen, etc) - but make sure to setup the pacman hook for those too.
  • by default the script expects a cpu microcode archive exists at /boot/intel-ucode.img, and packs it to the common initramfs. Use secure-boot UCODE= update to disable it.

Intro

To simplify, I boot Linux directly from UEFI (no intermediate bootloaders).

UEFI can only boot a single efi executable, but to boot Linux you also need one or more initramfs (including intel micro-code) and a command line[1]. So all of these things have to be combined with objcopy. The combined file is then signed.

Alternatively I'd need to use grub2 or some other bootloader that knows about SecureBoot - that kind of scares me since it increases the attack surface.

[1] command line: the boot command line maybe could be avoided with auto-discovery. AFAIK Arch is not fully ready for that yet.

Three keys/certificates are needed for UEFI SecureBoot (PK, KEK, DB). They are created with openssl.

MAKE SURE YOU KEEP your keys SECURE! Also put a BIOS password!

ASSUMPTIONS: /boot/ is the ESP (EFI System Partition)

Required packages: efibootmgr and from AUR: sbsigntools and efitools. pesign was recommended in some docs, didn't work at all for me when signing files.

Thinkpad

Thinkpads (T450s, X1 Carbon) don't have key management in the firmware (the bios), so a third-party one needs to be used. efitools has KeyTool.efi, so I copied it and the *.auth files in /boot/keys and set it up to boot on next-boot with efibootmgr.

Make sure to clear the built-in keys first, otherwise you can't setup your own. In some firmwares there's a separate option for that, or it does it when you select Enter Setup mode option. Save and reset, and now KeyTool.efi will be able to replace the PK, KEK and db certificates. I didn't just add the certificate because I wanted only my own keys there. If that is ok, reboot and enable SecureBoot.

On the next reboot KeyTool.efi can't run since it's not signed, so the boot will continue to my own combined and signed Linux image.

Don't forget to upgrade the firmware before starting. Bugs are often fixed and not even documented.

Testing in KVM

To run QEMU/KVM with the OVMF firmware (path specific to ArchLinux), run it as:

qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -bios /usr/share/edk2-ovmf/x64/OVMF_CODE.secboot.fd -hda vfat:/usr/share/efitools/efi/

or just install some Linux from .iso. Don't forget, UEFI requires GPT.

References