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Microsoft’s Secure Boot has been broken for a decade and no one noticed until now
(www.welivesecurity.com)
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this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2026
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Unpopular opinion but I’m dying on this hill. Secure boot creates more problems than it solves.
That's like saying windows 11 doesn't need tpm chips, an extremely popular opinion
I'd argue this is actually a popular opinion. IMO secureboot has just become a way for Microsoft to leverage it's position and keep a strangle hold on industries they have no business being in.
The whole kernel level anti-cheat on win11 bullshit in the gaming industry is a good example. Essentially locking games to its platform and willing to sacrifice security to do so at our expense.
This is especially true on computers where it is impossible to change the signing keys. Smartphones, game consoles, many laptops, some desktops, smart TVs, IoT devices, modern cars, etc.
I think that key can be changed on Google Pixels. I run GrapheneOS and reverting to stock would require erasing the key.
Kind of. You can change the signing key for the operating system, but you cannot change the signing key of the primary bootloader, as that is baked into the SoC.
I'm assuming this is why it will forever "warn" me that my phone is running an "insecure" OS?
That's moreso because it's using an unofficial key, so the device manufacturer (Google in the case of Pixels) cannot verify the authenticity of the OS you're running.
If you were able to replace that bootloader with a custom one, then you would be able to disable that message or just use a completely different bootloader like UBoot or EDK2 if it was ported, though.
OK!
Only in tech circles, it says secure and that's enough for most people.
Outside of tech circles most people think secure boot looks something like this
Was it ever popular?
Popular is the wrong question, the correct question is, how many machines is this default on.
What problem does it create? Its a good tech and we absolutely should be cryptographically verifying the boot process to ensure it hasnt been tampered with.
Because it's proprietary and in 99% of cases actually means "Windows Boot", and isn't very compatible with other OS. Windows is basically in charge of the entire technology and doesn't have a history of being friendly to other OS.
For a while Linux was completely blocked by this setting, which was yet another technical barrier to getting into Linux because you had to fuck around in your scary UEFI settings otherwise your PC would be soft-bricked after installing Linux. Nowadays it's slightly supported by some distributions but Microsoft could of course change it at any time.
Further reading: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UEFI/SecureBoot
The way it should work is that during the OS install the OS can ask to have a cert added to the keystore at which point UEFI pops up a screen that says something like:
This would at least be a vendor agnostic way of enrolling certificates instead of the MS certificate just always being pre-installed. It should also of course be publicly documented exactly how the process works so everyone can use it.
Problem being, of course, that you can add more certificates, but you can't revoke the original M$ one. And since it's vulnerable and you can't get rid, then these exploits still work and there's nothing you can do to stop it.
Computers shouldn't come with Microsoft keys preinstalled to begin with (or an operating system for that matter). Microsoft being able to have Windows preinstalled on the vast majority of non-Apple PCs is how they gained their monopoly in the first place.
You should be able to remove any or all the certs as well, although I could see an argument for requiring you to enter the BIOS to do that.
Universal Blue distros do that. For some reason you need to enter a password though.