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Secure bootstrap is not enough: shoring up the trusted computing base

Published: 19 September 2004 Publication History

Abstract

We propose augmenting secure boot with a mechanism to protect against compromises to field-upgradeable devices. In particular, secure boot standards should verify the firmware of all devices in the computer, not just devices that are accessible by the host CPU. Modern computers contain many autonomous processing elements, such as disk controllers, disks, network adapters, and coprocessors, that all have field-upgradeable firmware and are an essential component of the computer system's trust model. Ignoring these devices opens the system to attacks similar to those secure boot was engineered to defeat.

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  1. Secure bootstrap is not enough: shoring up the trusted computing base

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      cover image ACM Conferences
      EW 11: Proceedings of the 11th workshop on ACM SIGOPS European workshop
      September 2004
      214 pages
      ISBN:9781450378079
      DOI:10.1145/1133572
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      Published: 19 September 2004

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      EW04: ACM SIGOPS European Workshop 2004
      September 19 - 22, 2004
      Leuven, Belgium

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      • (2022)Verification of Hardware and Software with Fuzzing and ProofsCompanion Proceedings of the 2022 ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Systems, Programming, Languages, and Applications: Software for Humanity10.1145/3563768.3565549(34-37)Online publication date: 29-Nov-2022
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