Hi Tom,

...

Continuing the discussions we had on securing the boot flow and OS as much as possible, we came up with the following idea.

We are currently sorting out what's needed to add UEFI Secure Boot in U-Boot. This will cover the next payload (shim/grub2/shim depending on board needs).

In order to provide better overall security for the OS we'll need to at least verify DTB (if provided externally), initramfs and kernel modules.

1. For the kernel modules we can use kernel module signing facilities [1]
2. In case someone wants to provide an external DTB, we can use FIT images

to secure that. The FIT images will contain the DTB(s) we need. Those will only be used if the authentication process succeeds. This will allow us to verify DTBs without introducing any new functionality to U-Boot. 3. We need to verify initramfs as well. This can be accomplished in various ways. Packing kernel + initramfs or using dm-verity are the two obvious ones but we are open to suggestions.

For #3, making use of FIT images should be investigated seriously that already allows for what you're asking about.

Sure, thanks for the heads up. I had a sentence saying '#3 can deploy similar methods to #2" on my initial e-mail, but removed it right before sending. It makes a lot of sense to me to keep similar functionality, as long as we can keep the stored keys (to verify signatures) in small numbers.

-- Tom

Thanks /Ilias