Early boot, activation, upgrades

[Ivan Krstić]

On Jul 10, 2007, at 8:46 AM, C. Scott Ananian wrote:
> Can't we just SHA1 the kernel+initrd bundle and sign the hash?  SHA1
> should be fast enough...

The hashes we have available in OFW through the LTC code are  
Whirlpool and SHA-512. It's non-trivial to amend the list at this  
time. The current crypto code uses a slow(ish) and paranoid  
combination of the two hashes with two signature systems because it  
was designed to verify BIOS updates, where maximal paranoia is  
justified. We will want to adjust the system to drop down to a single  
hash algorithm and signature system for the normal boot integrity  
verification, which should make it quite a bit faster.

--
Ivan Krstić <krstic at solarsail.hcs.harvard.edu> | http://radian.org