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Comment by megamark16 | Hacker News Reader

Just until the day when it moves to the hardware level, where your hardware will refuse to run certain processes unless they are digitally signed. Good times.

See also "Intel Trusted Execution Technology": http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel-trusted-execu...

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This is the one feature that Trusted Execution Technology (TXT) does not provide. We really wanted to have something like that for a security type appliance, but it is impossible. The only thing TXT provides is the ability to prove to a third party that you are running an unmodified version of the software endorsed by them, so they can avoid sending their valuable content to a device controlled by you. It doesn't help you to ensure that the device will only boot software endorsed by you (or anybody), only to prove what software is running to somebody else.

But one should probably be lucky that that functionality is missing...

Things got quite close by now: mandatory driver signing in 64bit Windows Vista & 7. You need to select extra boot option to be able to load unsigned driver. Like the venerable ext2fsd: driver for ext2 & ext3 FS [1]. It won't work for Joe the Average User.

Terrorists win, game over.

[1] http://www.ext2fsd.com/

EDIT:

it's a clever move, limititing that requirement only to 64bit Windows. No need for one-time big switchover; the balance towards 64bit will shift gradually over time and before people raise enough opposition it may be too late for independet driver development.

We already know security based on centralized Certification Authorities did not work well for securing HTTPS.

Only allowing signed drivers to run in ring 0 by default makes a lot of sense though. The average user is way less likely to need ext2fsd and much more likely to install randommalwared.

For what it's worth, this wasn't to stop free software drivers, it was a stick to force IHVs to ship drivers that didn't suck, since they could no longer ship drivers that didn't pass WHQL testing.

The end result is a more stable system for consumers, but F/OSS got caught in the fallout.

If you as a F/OSS driver dev really want to avoid signatures, sign your driver using the test cert and run the following command in your installer:

    bcdedit -set testsigning on

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