• sunglocto@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    29
    ·
    5 hours ago

    Using the capital punishment symbol instead of the killed in action symbol suggests windows was executed after the war (likely by installing linux lol)

  • appetizer@lemmy.today
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    8
    ·
    edit-2
    6 hours ago

    I have a motherboard in a state where it won’t boot unless you pull and reinsert the cmos battery. After this it will boot exactly once.

    It will also boot without issue if you don’t have a cmos battery at all. This is obviously not ideal.

    I wonder if these issues are related? I purchased the motherboard second hand in this state about a year ago. So it is far too early for this update, but it remains a mystery.

  • ReCursing@feddit.uk
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    61
    ·
    16 hours ago

    Does “Secure Boot” actually benefit the end user in any way what so ever? Genuine question

    • enumerator4829@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      18
      ·
      5 hours ago

      For you? No. For most people? Nope, not even close.

      However, it mitigates certain threat vectors both on Windows and Linux, especially when paired with a TPM and disk encryption. Basically, you can no longer (terms and conditions apply) physically unscrew the storage and inject malware and then pop it back in. Nor can you just read data off the drive.

      The threat vector is basically ”our employees keep leaving their laptops unattended in public”.

      (Does LUKS with a password mitigate most of this? Yes. But normal people can’t be trusted with passwords and need the TPM to do it for them. And that basically requires SecureBoot to do properly.)

    • Cornelius_Wangenheim@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      11
      ·
      edit-2
      6 hours ago

      It prevents rootkit malware that loads before the OS and therefore is very difficult to detect. If enabled, it tells your machine to only load the OS if it’s signed by a trusted key and hasn’t been tampered with.

    • unlawfulbooger@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      44
      ·
      13 hours ago

      Well yes, assuming that:

      1. you trust the hardware manufacturer
      2. you can install your own keys (i.e. not locked by vendor)
      3. you secure your bios with a secure password
      4. you disable usb / network boot

      With this you can make your laptop very tamper resistant. It will be basically impossible to tamper with the bootloader while the laptop is off. (e.g install keylogger to get disk-encryption password).

      What they can do, is wipe the bios, which will remove your custom keys and will not boot your computer with secure boot enabled.

      Something like a supply-side attack is still possible however. (e.g. tricking you into installing a malicious bootloader while the PC is booted)

      Always use security in multiple layers, and to think about what you are securing yourself from.

        • carrylex@lemmy.worldOP
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          13 hours ago

          under Wikipedia’s entry for Secure boot

          What’s the first thing under the “Secure boot” section? The section that it automatically scrolls to when clicking my link?

          • InnerScientist@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            11
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            13 hours ago

            Secure Boot

            The UEFI specification defines a protocol known as Secure Boot, which…

            UEFI shell

            Classes

            Boot stages

            Usage

            Application development

            And finally

            Criticism

    • bdonvr@thelemmy.club
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      30
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      14 hours ago

      Yes, as long as you get the option to disable it. And use custom keys.

      It’s uh, more secure.

          • Nat (she/they)@lemmy.blahaj.zone
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            5
            ·
            6 hours ago

            My keys were fine, I’d used them on a previous system. My best guess is boot failed because GPU firmware wasn’t signed with my keys, only Microsoft’s keys. And of course, I can’t just CMOS clear, and I don’t have an iGPU. It’s crazy that an OS can brick my motherboard; I’d be a lot more forgiving if a BIOS option bricked it, but exposing a “brick me” option in efivars for any ring 0 software to press??

      • Lucy :3@feddit.org
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        8
        ·
        12 hours ago

        Specifically signed by anyone with a key - which, considering multiple where leaked over time - is everyone.

  • Blemgo@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    38
    ·
    17 hours ago

    I had this problem at work a week ago or so, at least with Fujitsu PCs. For them, the main cause isn’t an empty CMOS battery, but rather that Fujitsu generally had too little BIOS cache, since there is nothing about it in the UEFI standard. The update basically overfilled that cache, rendering the BIOS completely unusable. The POST doesn’t even go through fully.

    The PC are sort of bricked, you gotta put the mainboard into recovery mode, put the ROM file on a freeBSD formatted stick and wait until you see instructions on the screen. Follow them, restart the PC. I recommend setting the BIOS to the optimized default settings, as not doing that might make the boot of Windows pretty slow in some cases. I did hear that it can delete the keys from the TPM, but I haven’t seen that with my PCs at work.

    • Crozekiel@lemmy.zip
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      17
      ·
      16 hours ago

      Not only that, if you try to click any of the links, like the partner list or privacy statements, it takes you to another page with the same pop-up over it… So you have to accept the shit to read their disclosures… What a shitty website, unless the purpose was to keep the information a secret, then it works great because I sure as shit didn’t read it.

    • carrylex@lemmy.worldOP
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      13 hours ago

      Well the website (and the guy maintaing it) is pretty old. I think the blog posts reach back till Windows Vista. The guy itself wrote some books about Win95 so he has some experience.

      The site is quite popular in Germany and the information is usually good summarized and helpful IMHO.

      Anyway as always I recommend an adblocker when using the internet.

  • altkey@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    14
    ·
    16 hours ago

    Allen&Heath sound controllers on Ubuntu had a funny failure too. It’s touchscreen and extra screen would show nothing on boot although the sound controls (for one surface config) works. In order to fix that, you need a replacement battery, a keyboard to boot into it’s BIOS and a password they don’t disclose publicly. I revived a couple of these by a pure luck of discovering someone posting said passwords 5+ years ago. It’s so hostile I hate it.

    • carrylex@lemmy.worldOP
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      20
      ·
      17 hours ago

      Yes, multiple of our Windows laptops today couldn’t boot and displayed a BitLocker error message and all affected laptops somehow had an empty BIOS battery…

        • carrylex@lemmy.worldOP
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          6
          ·
          16 hours ago

          AFAIK a new battery + entering the Bitlocker recovery key fixed the problems.

          Usually these batteries hold for years. I have a 15+ year old laptop where I had to replace the battery after ~10 years.

          However the affected laptops are now a few years old, aren’t designed properly (I heard weird stuff happening like adding additional RAM somehow causes the display to fail) and somehow just have a CR2016 battery installed, not a bigger CR2032. And yes these are buisness-laptops designed for companies -.-

          • Neshura@bookwyr.me
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            4 hours ago

            See there’s your problem: you think they are business laptops but actually they might actually be “business” laptops. What’s the difference? Well one is made to actually fulfill the needs so the company can extract the most work out of them, the other is made to sound awesome to unknowing managers and sales people, think all those laptops with “AI” plastered all over the marketing. The only thing those two variants have in common is that you pay out of your nose for them.