On Fri, 3 Mar 2017 08:48:30 -0500 taii...@gmx.com wrote: > Of course, as I stated you have to bootstrap the crypto from the > motherboard EEPROM chip. > >> One way is to use a blob-free coreboot IOMMU supporting board and > >> bootstrap the crypto/kernel off of the board firmware EEPROM chip to > >> load the initial kernel thus no plaintext touches the disk and thus > >> nothing can mess with it. > >> > >> The IOMMU (theoretically) protects the CPU and memory from rogue > >> devices, such as the hard drive. > > No. Any DMA capable device can bypass IOMMU. IOMMU was not > > designed to protect OS from device. > That isn't true, it was designed for exactly that and of course for > assigning devices to VM's. > > I get an AMD-Vi IOMMU IO_PAGE_FAULT alert in dmesg whenever a device > tries to do something it shouldn't and the remapping hardware blocks it. > > In linux the kernel/drivers configure which memory locations the devices > are allowed to access.
This can be easily bypassed. See my reply to Rich in this thread. It may protect you from accidental errors, it will not protect you from malicious action. > >> In terms of ethics IBM *for now* is a way better company than Intel/AMD, > >> their POWER servers are owner controlled as there isn't any boot > >> guard/secure boot/management engine/platform "security" processor (amd's > >> ME) to stop you from re-writing the firmware as you please. They also > >> have an getting-there-almost-reasonable open source effort (OpenPOWER) > > Indeed they are. But that boxes are quite expensive and hard to get. > Hard to get? You can buy them from IBM's website like any other computer. > http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/hardware/linux-lc.html There is no way to import them into my country now. In a year or two maybe, but not now :/ Best regards, Andrew Savchenko
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