Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1758488AbXFURvI (ORCPT ); Thu, 21 Jun 2007 13:51:08 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1759496AbXFURux (ORCPT ); Thu, 21 Jun 2007 13:50:53 -0400 Received: from dsl081-033-126.lax1.dsl.speakeasy.net ([64.81.33.126]:34196 "EHLO bifrost.lang.hm" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1759077AbXFURuw (ORCPT ); Thu, 21 Jun 2007 13:50:52 -0400 Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2007 10:51:06 -0700 (PDT) From: david@lang.hm X-X-Sender: dlang@asgard.lang.hm To: Lennart Sorensen cc: Michael Poole , "H. Peter Anvin" , Tomas Neme , "Linux-Kernel@Vger. Kernel. Org" Subject: Re: Dual-Licensing Linux Kernel with GPL V2 and GPL V3 In-Reply-To: <20070621174332.GD10008@csclub.uwaterloo.ca> Message-ID: References: <871wg6trnx.fsf@graviton.dyn.troilus.org> <467977F7.2040506@zytor.com> <87sl8ms9z5.fsf@graviton.dyn.troilus.org> <87k5tys8w5.fsf@graviton.dyn.troilus.org> <87645is82q.fsf@graviton.dyn.troilus.org> <20070621171612.GC10008@csclub.uwaterloo.ca> <20070621174332.GD10008@csclub.uwaterloo.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1761 Lines: 43 On Thu, 21 Jun 2007, Lennart Sorensen wrote: > On Thu, Jun 21, 2007 at 10:26:04AM -0700, david@lang.hm wrote: >> the bios doesn't have enough capability to talk to the outside world for >> updates. > > Of course, although perhaps it could. More likely my thought was that > the service when it decides to download an update, would include the > updated bios image and put it on the boot drive where the existing bios > can find it. No signature needs to be added to the boot drive or > kernel, just checksums in the bios image. > >> what tivo actually does is very similar to this >> >> they encode into the bios the ability to check a checksum/signature for >> the kernel+boot filesystem and if they don't match look to see if there is >> another kernel+boot filesystem available >> >> then software on the boot filesystem checks to see if the rest of the >> system has been tampered with before it mounts / you snippede the bit about not knowing how to stop it >> the GPLv3 is trying to do this. > > Perhaps they should just explicitly say that then. they call the section the anti-tivoization, how much more explicit can they get? David Lang by the way, just in case anyone is misunderstanding me. I don't believe for a moment that all these anti-tamper features actually work in the real world (the PS3 hacking kits are proof of the lengths people will go to to make the 'hard' hardware-level hacking trivial to do) but the approach needs to be at secure modulo hardware tampering or software bugs. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/