Bug 1323363

Summary: remove "-D SECURE_BOOT_ENABLE" from AAVMF
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Reporter: Laszlo Ersek <lersek>
Component: ovmfAssignee: Laszlo Ersek <lersek>
Status: CLOSED CURRENTRELEASE QA Contact: Virtualization Bugs <virt-bugs>
Severity: high Docs Contact:
Priority: high    
Version: 7.3CC: chayang, drjones, jcm, jfeeney, juzhang, mrezanin
Target Milestone: rcKeywords: OtherQA
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: aarch64   
OS: Unspecified   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: ovmf-20160419-1.git90bb4c5.el7 Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
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Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2017-10-10 10:53:14 UTC Type: Bug
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
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Description Laszlo Ersek 2016-04-02 06:57:54 UTC 
NVR: AAVMF-20160202-2.gitd7c0dfa.el7.noarch

The AAVMF firmware binaries currently include the secure boot feature / infrastructure. However, in aarch64 / "virt" virtual machines, the UEFI varstore pflash chip cannot be protected with virtual hardware means from a malicious runtime guest OS. (In OVMF's case (x86_64), this is solved by using SMM, but for aarch64, anything similar in that direction lies pretty far out.)

The false sense of security that could arise from AAVMF's secure boot infrastructure has been deemed to outweigh the guest OS development / testing features that the same enables. Therefore, in the next rebase of the "ovmf" SRPM, the secure boot feature should be removed from AAVMF.

Consequently, the sub-package's "License:" tag, the license files that the sub-package installs, and the TianoCore splash screen that AAVMF shows, should all be adapted to the lack of OpenSSL in the AAVMF binaries.
Comment 1 Jon Masters 2016-04-12 17:25:06 UTC 
Agree with this change. Ultimately, one assumes a virtual EL3 (Secure World) akin to SMM will be used to protect the flash content from the VM OS.
Comment 5 Laszlo Ersek 2017-10-10 10:53:14 UTC 
This was fixed in RHEL-ALT-7.3.