Questions tagged [boot]
"Booting" is the process of starting up a computer from the OFF state. This tag is for attacks and security measures relating to the startup routine of computer hardware, firmware, or operating systems.
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Does rebooting a phone daily increase your phone's security?
Recently, the Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese gave some advice to regularly reboot your phone to boost its security.
Apparently this advice is somewhat commonly given to legislators. This ...
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How Do Rootkits & Other Low-Level Malware Still Manage to Load on Systems Protected by Secure Boot (and TB/MB)?
Let me try asking my question this way...
Let's say that I'm a offensive cyber Bad Guy working for a foreign state-sponsored Advanced Persistent Threat unit. My unit is charged with, say, stealing ...
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What's stopping someone from copying my HDD/SSD?
Let's say I have to leave my computer unattended and turned off for a while with some strangers, is it possible for someone to clone my HDD and SSD data?
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How are TPMs provisioned for Intel Trusted Execution Environment (TXT)?
For Intel TXT to work, the TPM must be provisioned. Intel provides some tools for doing this but many are protected by non-public login or an NDA. Many OEM platform vendors provision their boards and ...
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Write-protection at hardware level for security
It seems to me that to maximise server security, one ought - in addition to the usual security measures implemented in software - to prevent the overwriting of certain parts of the server system, such ...
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How is hibernation supported, on machines with UEFI Secure Boot?
I've been learning about UEFI Secure Boot, which attempts to prevent "bootkits" by locking down the boot process so that only signed bootloaders and kernels can be loaded.
Hibernation seems like a ...
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Can a physical attacker compromise a Windows machine with UEFI, secure boot and bitlocker?
Machines such as the MS Surface Pro 3 comes with bitlocker encryption and UEFI secure boot out of the box. However, the default boot order is network -> usb -> ssd.
If an attacker gets physical ...
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What are the biggest security concerns on PXE?
What are the top security concerns when setting up a PXE (Preboot Execution Environment) booting environment, ordered by severity of a possible exploitation?
Things that I thought of are (in no ...
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Android verified boot within the boot sequence
I'm interested in understanding the verified boot process in Android, yet I was unable to find insights about some properties of the process.
From what I gathered so far I get that in Android devices ...
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UEFI Firmware integrity measurement
We know that UEFI measures the OS bootloader image integrity every time we power on our computer if secure boot is enabled.
With the growing attacks and discoveries of UEFI vulnerabilities, the ...
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Dynamic vs Static root of trust
In TCG specification (for TPM devices) they specify how a static root of trust can be built up using secure boot and trusted boot. An alternative method appears to be Intel's Dynamic boot using their ...
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How effective is something like Deep Freeze against boot sector infections?
I work for an embedded system manufacturer and on our older generation systems, which are powered by Windows Embedded, a number of customers have been experiencing virus infections. Due to the real ...
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How does UEFI Secure Boot prevent "evil twin" spoofing attacks?
I've been learning about UEFI Secure Boot. It is designed to prevent malware from infecting the boot process and overwriting the bootloader. It has hardware-level protections to ensure that only a ...
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TPM bootstrap process
Assume that the file partition where the PC operating system and user data reside are sealed by a number of PCRs (Platform Configuration Registers) dedicated to BIOS measurements. What happens during ...
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Utilman.exe command prompt hack prevention?
This trick to hack windows and reset passwords(or create new logins)has been around for ages and still works on windows 7 and windows 8. Is there any way to disable the key combination that brings up ...
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Full disk encryption on dual boot system (Truecrypt/Veracrypt)
I am looking to run my laptop system with a dual boot configuration (Fedora + Windows) with full disk encryption.
I have a laptop that I will be bringing with me while traveling, both domestically ...
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Is Secure Boot really Secure?
I found the concept of Secure Boot quite intriguing.
I can't say that I know much about it because I don't but I believe I understand the main concept of it.
Secure Boot verifies the signature of the ...
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VeraCrypt - Windows boots Automated Repair on UEFI/GPT
OK. So I used VeraCrypt to encrypt the system partition and now Windows boots its automated repair only. After the repair in what I think is Windows Recovery Environment I can choose to boot off USB ...
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What is susceptible to Kon Boot hack tool?
I just learned about Kon Boot (from this YouTube video) and am wondering, how is such a hack tool guarded against? In the video the presenter claimed he had full disk encryption but was still able to ...
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Lighteater - BIOS/UEFI vulnerable
I am currently a bit confused, I have read today an article about the BIOS-rootkit Lighteater made by John Loucaides and Andrew Furtaki. In their presentation 'How many million BIOSes would you like ...
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Self-encrypting drives, certification for tamper-protection?
Consider a drive with Opal 2.0 support that works with Microsoft Bitlocker's "eDrive" feature. In this case, supposedly, the encryption key never leaves the disk (which might increase security, ...
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securing Ubuntu bootloader using TPM
I am currently working with Ubuntu 16.04 , with an Intel CPU that supports TPM2 module.
I am trying to harden my boot-loader, i tried using trustedgrub2 fork that supports TPM2 , i understand that ...
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Is TPM ownership required for secure boot or measured boot?
I know:
Secure Boot - can use the TPM
Measured Boot - must use the TPM
Can anyone intimately familiar with these processes explain if any TPM owner-authorized commands are required or used in these ...
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Impact of Mathew Garrett's Secure GRUB Bootloader on UEFI Secure Boot
My eyebrows rose with Matthew Garrett announcing his Secure GRUB Bootloader less than three hours after no longer being a Red Hat employee. This work and its impact on the trust chain design of the ...
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Preventing boot from external media in case of theft of laptop or physical security breach in case of desktops?
I wanted to protect my Laptop from common theft. What I did was that I installed an anti-theft software on my Ubuntu 14.04. The guest account is enabled so that the thief can use my laptop while I ...
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Detect changes in /boot when using full disk encryption
When running a fully encrypted linux system using dm-crypt, the /boot partition has to be unencrypted to boot, as far as I know. I've setup a server that can be unlocked remotely by connecting to a ...
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Securing the bootloader
When using full disk encryption the bootloader is not encrypted thus allowing attacks like the Evil Maid.
My question is how can I secure myself from this? Can I encrypt the drive or store it in a ...
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How does measured boot work using TPM
Within the measured boot process, consider a scenario where I aim to create a measurement for a specific piece of code, perhaps, for illustrative purposes, a potentially malicious operating system. so ...
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Why does openSUSE sporadically prompt during boot to trust its built-in certificate?
The conundrum
My wife’s laptop has been running openSUSE Leap 15.0 for several years, and she has once or twice been flummoxed by this prompt at the very beginning of the boot sequence, most recently ...
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How to protect Linux partition from access from Windows partition?
In a dual-boot environment (windows? and linux mint 15) What would be best best way to prevent access to the linux partition(s) when the system is booted into windows 7?
The goal would be to ...
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Will converting a MBR disk to GPT, formatting and the converting back to MBR remove a infected boot record.
Will converting a MBR disk to GPT, formatting and the converting back to MBR remove a infected boot record. I am looking into writing a little program that will take a connected USB with a MBR ...
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How do boot-sector viruses propagate?
I'm doing research on various malware and I came across boot-sector viruses. Kaspersky states that "they are not designed to infect removable media."
My question is, how do they spread then?
Again ...
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What's the point of encrypting /boot or / partition?
I'm not talking about full disk hardware encryption. I'm talking about software encryption.
encrypting /home prevents your data after your laptop is stolen. As far as I understand, encrypting / and /...
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Is there a reliable way to simulate "Evil Maid Attack" boot path tampering when using bitlocker?
Suppose you have a system whose OS drive is encrypted with bitlocker and uses TPM + PIN authentication to authenticate the boot path against tampering. As I understand it, this setup theoretically ...
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Are there any Linux distributions with enabled TPM2 and full disk encryption setups
I have been searching the web to find a Linux distribution, preferrably a rolling release one as I'm otherwise hooked on the concepts in Arch Linux, with automated steps to setup full disk encryption (...
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What program can Decrypt specific a Folder/Files during Windows Boot/Loading? (Windows)
I've been looking into Encryption of my data for some time now; I've decided to move ahead with VeraCrypt for encryption all of my partitions (I have 2 disks in 1 laptop) except for the OS (C:) ...
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How does Android prevent me from installing custom system services?
I am trying to understand the secure boot process. Lets say the firmware is locked and only does signed installation of an OS image. This "image" is a compressed bundle of all the binaries needed by ...
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Windows Secure Boot compromise: are fully-patched PCs vulnerable?
Are fully-patched (as of Aug. 10, 2016) Windows installs vulnerable to allowing self-signed early-boot malware to run- because of this ? If so, which versions of Windows are vulnerable.
What in ...
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Can the windows Remote Procedure Call subsystem be modified from the default without causing Windows 8/8.1/10 to break?
This is a question that personally as a security professional has bugged me for a long time.
So, a default Windows installation, from XP up to 10, typically has a few services listening on the quad-...
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Does Windows 8 UEFI Trusted Boot protect SSDT table from modification?
I read from a link that says:
Trusted Boot takes over where Secure Boot leaves off. The bootloader verifies the digital signature of the Windows 8
kernel before loading it. The Windows 8 kernel, ...
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Why are pins required on boot on devices with fingerprint readers? [duplicate]
Both my iPad and my android phone are configured to allow access via either a pin, or a fingerprint scan. However, immediately after a reboot, neither device allows a fingerprint for the first unlock; ...
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Is a computer more vulnerable if wireless is left on when booting?
Normally I switch off wireless on my laptop before I shut it down but I forgot to do this last night. So this morning, after I booted up the laptop, I saw the wireless notification on the bottom right ...
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Understanding Secure Boot
I'm trying to understand the secure boot process of an OS but there are few points I can't wrap my head around.
At a high level, afaik, secure boot ensures that the loaded OS is authenticated by its ...
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System encryption on a uefi system?
I was thinking about encrypting my ssd(just out of curiosity, mostly) and was wondering the possible security threats an unencrypted /boot partition can pose(if any).
I know that I can encrypt the ...
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Could a computer turn itself on if the BIOS was modified even if it was turned off by holding the power button down?
My Thinkpad might have been hacked and I know this sounds a little far-fetched, but I suspect the BIOS might have also been hacked.
Would turning it off by holding the power button for a few seconds ...
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tpm sealing and secure boot
I have worked with TPM for a while, and I'm interested in some of its features. Especially sealing and the use of TPM's PCRs in the secure boot process.
My question is: What is stopping an attacker ...
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Prevent cold boot attack on running laptop by overwriting ram [closed]
I'd like to use my laptop as a recording device when I leave home, but there would still be the possibility for a cold boot attack or with DDR3 RAM even warm boot attack is possible as I have read.
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Is there such thing as a password enforced write protected flash drive?
We would like to provide a flash drive to a client, that they can boot to, which includes a read-only operating system of our own customization, probably Linux. Every boot, it starts from clean slate.
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What can a compromised firmware (UEFI) do after the hard-disk has been wiped?
I might be mistaken, but it seems the firmware (UEFI) needs to load some stuff from the disk to be able to do anything really interesting, like loading some advanced tools or loading the OS. Yet ...
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In a secure boot bootloader chain, does a bootloader image contain the RootCA certificate of the next bootloader?
This is coming from Qualcomm's Secure Boot explanation.
https://www.qualcomm.com/content/dam/qcomm-martech/dm-assets/documents/secure-boot-image-authentication_11.30.16.pdf
Within it, it explains that ...
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