Last Tuesday, loads of Linux users—many running packages released as early as this year—started reporting their devices were failing to boot. Instead, they received a cryptic error message that included the phrase: “Something has gone seriously wrong.”
The cause: an update Microsoft issued as part of its monthly patch release. It was intended to close a 2-year-old vulnerability in GRUB, an open source boot loader used to start up many Linux devices. The vulnerability, with a severity rating of 8.6 out of 10, made it possible for hackers to bypass secure boot, the industry standard for ensuring that devices running Windows or other operating systems don’t load malicious firmware or software during the bootup process. CVE-2022-2601 was discovered in 2022, but for unclear reasons, Microsoft patched it only last Tuesday.
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The reports indicate that multiple distributions, including Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Zorin OS, Puppy Linux, are all affected. Microsoft has yet to acknowledge the error publicly, explain how it wasn’t detected during testing, or provide technical guidance to those affected. Company representatives didn’t respond to an email seeking answers.
So, no booting into Windows until this is fixed then? Fine by me. Hell, might actually make me uninstall it completely and free some disk space…
Well… It’s the opposite… People affected by this issue could not boot Linux…
Right, but you have to boot into Windows first to even get the update in the first place…
But if you don’t boot Windows first you’ll not be affected by this issue. So my statement is correct
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That’s… What the person you replied to said in the first place.
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No, they’re literally saying the same thing
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The update was meant to fix a situation where an attacker would somehow get grub onto a machine that was SINGLE booting windows and use grub to tamper with secureboot. this fix was meant to only apply in single boot situations where it should be entirely unexpected to see grub. as they said, something went seriously wrong.
Preach brother
“secure” boot, the industry standard for ensuring that devices don’t run software other than Windows during the bootup process
FTFY
Nah, you can enroll your own keys and set it up so you can be reasonably certain that your boot image hasn’t been altered, validating its integrity against the potential threat of bootkits. I do this with my Gentoo install.
I’m confused - why is Microsoft trying to - or expected to, by the article authors - patch a vulnerability in GRUB?
I was interested too. It seems Microsoft has released a patch that blacklists vulnerable grub versions from being able to be secure booted even if they are signed properly:
https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/en-US/advisory/CVE-2022-2601
The link was at the top of the article.
Maybe this update somehow affects your UEFI firmware, and it installs a list in there?
Secure Boot is bullshit anyway
It is fine if you only accept signatures from yourself. However, that’s a lot of work as you need to sign everything.
Good luck replacing the PKI on your system’s Secure Boot firmware. Most platforms probably don’t support it and have no documentation
How is it a lot of work? There’s generally one sig you have to add on installing a new OS. Sometimes, rarely, one for a new kernel module. It’s not like you sign every single package you boot.
Still takes work. You also need to disable all other keys if you want it to matter in terms of security.
What are you talking about with “disabling all other keys”? You don’t need to do this at all. You’re seriously making a mountain out of a molehill.
Why wouldn’t you disable other keys? If anyone can boot anything why use secure boot?
I think you’re misunderstanding the purpose of Secure Boot. It’s not designed, nor very good at, preventing physical access. It’s designed to verify the authenticity of the code you are booting each time, most generally to prevent remote attacks. Think of it more like how HTTPS works. The reason you commonly have to install new keys when installing Linux is because there are separate ones for the bootloader, the OS, and kernel modules. GRUBs is generally already in the database. The OS can be hit and miss, Canonical generally has theirs included for example. Then there’s the kernel modules. If they were built and included in binary form, they’re usually signed with the same key as the OS. But if they’re built locally, say when you install NVIDIA driver’s, then they’re signed with a local key, which has to be enrolled. So it’s similar to a self-signed HTTPS certificate. A lot of routers use those, and browser’s will throw a big warning you have to click through. It’s the same with Secure Boot. For example, if a virus tries to build a malicious kernel module, it will throw the same enrollment screen, which would let you know something’s up if you didn’t initiate it. There also has to be a password, that you set in userspace, and then re-enter on the enrollment screen, confirming that it’s a requested action.
Disabling other keys won’t prevent someone from simply entering the bios and disabling Secure Boot first if they have physical access, which would let them boot anything. If you want to prevent that, then the methods you would generally use is setting a system password in the BIOS it asks for each boot, or disabling other boot options (or the boot menu depending on the computer) and setting a BIOS password. However, if you’re trying to prevent people from booting other OSes as a way to protect your files from being accessed, well someone could just take the drive out with physical access. The best practice there is to encrypt the drive with something like BitLocker, FileVault or LUKS/dm-crypt (basis of many distros full-disk encrypt features).
Edit: You could also have Secure Boot enabled, delete every other key and set a BIOS password if you wanted too I guess. I haven’t tried, nor read of anyone trying too.
I get to dual boot at work (I run mint btw) and the only reason I ever boot into windows every week or three is to make sure it doesn’t get so out of date that it gets booted from the network.
I guess it’s time to stop that shit! Having windows available is not worth the risk of messing up my work machine. Hell I’m tempted to nuke that windows partition and double the size of my /home partition!
Though I will give Microsoft credit that m365 stuff, including video calls in Teams, work great using the web versions in Firefox. That’s even with the security and privacy stuff cranked up. I only white listed those sites for cookies and local storage for convenience.
Whaaaat, you’re having a good experience with teams in Firefox? I’ve run into all kinds of problems with teams under Firefox in linux, particularly with codecs and not being able to receive video. It works better under edge in linux, but unsurprisingly, the best teams experience is under the native client in Windows.
Yeah, honestly it’s worked fine without any fiddling around. If it makes a difference, I tend to do things like let mint use non-free components if necessary, and I know I do have the “play drm stuff” option turned on I’m Firefox, even though the privacy and security stuff is all strict.
It’s just a Dell laptop with a discrete nvidia gpu in addition to the embedded Intel one. I think it works fine though with either the open drivers or the closed nvidia ones, but I don’t know if it touches that gpu.
I just tried installing this patch tonight on my windows drive - not because I use windows, just to… you know… keep it updated and secure I guess.
It literally won’t even install. It just fails out every time. Whatever. Microsoft releases so many bad patches lately. WTH are they even doing over there? Windows used to be king and they’ve been screwing it up since 8 came out.
Microsoft fired its entire QA team 10 years ago, and shifted the responsibility for testing onto developers. They also got rid of their dedicated hardware lab where software would be tested on many different hardware combinations.
I have worked in two companies that made the same move of firing QA, and in both the quality of the released software took a marked dive. (In neither company did senior management admit that what everyone warned them would be a mistake was a mistake. Instead they blamed developers.)
These days Microsoft’s testing team is whichever users receive each update first. They rely on users and telemetry to do what should be the job of dedicated testers.
This is hardly a new thing for MS. One of the first emails I remember getting when I got to college back in 2003 was from campus IT begging people not to install the latest XP update because it reenabled a vulnerability to existing malware.
Microsoft fired its entire QA team 10 years ago, and shifted the responsibility for testing onto developers. They also got rid of their dedicated hardware lab where software would be tested on many different hardware combinations.
That…makes SO much sense and explains a lot! Thanks for mentioning it.
Maybe its finally time to get rid of my dual boot. I haven’t used the windows side in like half a year…
I was shocked how little I need Windows. I went dual boot install but just… never booted Windows again. My games work. I’m happy. Why should I boot Windows?
Really I should just remove Windows but I’m lazy.
And each time you want to use Windows, you have to go through hoops and updates of Windows and then updates of the applications (and possibly games) to just do the work you intended to boot into. I had Windows for a few years in dual mode too and know the problems of a Windows system that is not used often.
If you really need some applications, then consider using a VM (however doesn’t solve the updates and usability issue of Windows). Off course some games won’t work, but if its not a game then maybe you can finally get rid of your dual boot.
At this point, the only thing keeping me back is I have a bunch of files made in Clip Studio Paint that I can’t open in linux, but I think I might be able to run CSP in a VM, if needs be. Not really anything gaming related.
Now just to find time to do it lol
That’s actually not bad, if this is the only thing (hold on, after looking into a bit it could be a show stopper still). An idea is, if its not too many files, would be to save them from this application in a more universal usable format and not use it anymore. But that comes with ton compatibility issues on itself, so who knows.
It seems like WINE (the tool that is used as main part of Proton in Steam) can run Clip Studio Paint, but not great (Silver rating): https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&iId=15102 And then the question is if it will even work well with Wacom devices this way. Also I’m a bit worried if it will work well in a VM too.
If anything, I havent really touched those files in a while, so I probably won’t need anything from them. I think I got most of the files I regularly used converted to something Kirta can read before I switched. Thanks!
Go for it! You can always do a Windows VM for the rare times you may need it - if at all.
This sort of ridiculousness is why I got two seperate drives (needed the extra space anyways) and choose which one to boot from the mobo EFI menu.
Yep, I don’t even fuck with grub since that has fucked me over in the past too, I just go into the fucking bios and select it manually lmao
windows update can and will always find your dual boot eventually and break it
I got around that by having two EFI partitions, grub linux partition is loaded always at boot and it chainloads to the Windows EFI boot partition if I choose Windows. Windows does not know another partiton exists.
Y’all, help a dummy out. I dual boot windows and Fedora. I only keep windows around for a very few college classes that require for screenwriting software. I have not booted into windows in months. I have a screenwriting class coming up in a week.
How worried should I be? I am not great with computers, I run fedora mostly because I support the philosophy of Linux, less for the techy stuff. Please advice, Linux people. I’m scurred.
Sorry idk specifically how to avoid the update, but the linked ArsTechnica article has some advice
Someone here advised & I’d agree: use a Windows VM, for things you haven’t found the Linux version of yet.
Windows’s plan to screenshot everything will include your private artistic work too, so you’ll be doing yourself a favor
When I was still dual-booting Windows and Linux, I found that “raw disk” mode virtual machines worked wonders. I used VirtualBox, so you’d want a guide somewhat like this: https://superuser.com/questions/495025/use-physical-harddisk-in-virtual-box - other VM solutions are available, which don’t require you to accept an agreement with Oracle.
Essentially, rather than setting aside a file on disk as your VM’s disk, you can set aside a whole existing disk. That can be a disk that already has Windows installed on it, it doesn’t erase what you have. Then you can start Windows in a VM and let it do its updates - since it can’t see the bootloader from within the VM, it can’t fuck it up. You can run any software that doesn’t have particularly high graphics requirement, too.
I was also able to just “restart in Windows” if I wanted full performance for a game or something like that, but since Linux has gotten very good indeed at running games, that became less and less necessary until one day I just erased my Windows partition to recover the space.
I’ve never run a virtual machine, because I’ve always had, frankly, really shitty laptops. Like… Cheapest of the cheap without being a Chromebook. Only decent computer I’ve ever bought got broken within a month. :(
Can I run VMs on really low end specs? The screenwriting software is the only thing I need it for, and I’m assuming it’s pretty much the same as running a word processor.
However bad that sounds, you’re probably best off disabling all updates in windows. O&O shutup10 has a setting for that. Download it to a pendrive with Linux, and boot windows with network unplugged.
I will do this. Thank you!
Does your device have 16gb of ram? If so install Windows in Virtual manager with the guest addons. It will allow copy and paste along with lots of other features while keeping Windows in its own area.
It was 8 gigs. Someone else suggested boxes over a VM, would 8 gigs be enough for either of those?
No, 8 GB is not enough for virtualization of Windows guests
If you have trouble make a rEFInd USB stick and boot that
What do you use? Maybe there is a Linux alternative to that so you don’t have to bother with a VM.
They require a program called Final Draft. I looked around but couldn’t find an alternative
Try running it in Bottles. A lot of programs work there without many issues.
Use Bottles Flatpak
Bottles uses WINE which is way more performant than a VM.
Thank you for the advise! YouTube tutorials, here I come!
Technically it uses Soda + Proton but same diff
How is that different?
Proton works better and is generally more performant
Yes Proton is different from Soda, but how is “technically Soda” actually what Bottles runs? I thought bottles runs WINE, which runs Soda as the runtime
Which are both custom versions of Wine with extra patches? They aren’t something like Luxortorpeda where it replaces the Windows game engine with a Linux one.
Soda is the default Runtime, Proton (and outside of steam you should use Proton-GE) is the Steam one with way more compatibility for Games
Yes, I am aware of what it uses, but thanks for over-explaining. I was commenting on that person’s implication that Soda and Proton, aren’t infact, just variations of Wine.
Do you know which bootloader you have? There are two popular ones in use currently, one called systemd boot, the other is called grub. From reading this post only grub seems to be affected. I don’t really know which one fedora defaults to at the moment, and it likely depends on what happened during the installation process as well.
If they’re using Fedora, then it is highly likely that they are using GRUB as you have to very much go out of your way to utilize systemd-boot on Fedora the last time I checked.
Out of curiosity, have you tried Fade In?
I looked into it, but I can’t afford it out of pocket. The school pays for final draft, but won’t cover anything else :/ If I could, that would definitely be my go-to
It’s free tho? Except for some minor limitations:
“The free downloadable demonstration version of Fade In includes all key functionality except for online realtime collaboration, and will place a watermark on any printed/PDF output.”
And there are ways around those
Oh shit, this I did not know. I just Googled the price and I guess it only showed the paid version. Sweet! Thank you! If this works, I can officially uninstall Windows! That’s literally the last thing holding me to it. :D
My pleasure. I will mention, that unless the author changed the program since last I used it, it also has a small popup every ten minutes or so, asking if you’d like to buy it. Remarkably, I didn’t find this terribly annoying, and forgot all about it until writing this comment - so don’t let that be a hindrance!
So I just emailed my professor, and he says that I can use fade in if the formatting is the same as final draft, and I buy the license so there’s no watermark. Which sucks, but fuggit it it lets me keep using Linux. Do you know if the formatting is the same? This is only my second ever screenwriting class.
The watermark is only applied if something is printed directly from Fade In: export and print somewhere else and there should be no watermark. As for the formatting, I don’t recall - but I do know, that everything is configurable; so you can make the formatting the same, if it differs
It looks like some GRUB versions are fixed, e.g. possibly in Ubuntu from 22.10. Dunno if Fedora has the fixed version. I’m facing the same with my Mint/Windows dual boot; considering not booting windows till I’m ready to upgrade Mint to 22.
If you do get problems, it also looks like you can get around it by turning off secure boot until things are sorted.
If you’re not an experienced Linux meddler I wouldn’t recommend changing your bootloader from the default given by your distribution, but I guess if this is widespread most distros will upgrade their bootlodladers soon to deal with it.
Which screenwriting software? Have you tried running it under WINE?
And do you HAVE to use that one in particular? Or can you use something like Trelby, Manuskript, or Scrite?
The school pays for final draft, and I am poor. But someone else just showed me fade in was free and works with Linux, so I’m gonna try that out!
Ah. I did love final draft when my school paid for it. I’ve never used fade in, but the three I mentioned are all free, too. I’m not sure what version of final draft you’re using, but it doesn’t really matter for this, as its support under WINE is pretty lacking. Good luck!!
Can you install windows in a VM instead? VirtualBox is easy to set up.
Don’t use Virtualbox as native libvirt will be faster and doesn’t involve any licensing.
Depends if you care more about performance or ease of use. Based on the fact that OP hadn’t considered VM as a solution, I assume they aren’t super familiar with hypervisors.
Virtualbox is a pain. Virtual manager is much easier and natively supported. You just click new and then follow the wizard
That’s not at all the case in my experience. Sure virtual box modules can be harder to install, but libvirt has so many issues that the average user has no idea about. I’ve had networking issues, display issues, and so on. At one point it read the display scaling information and scaled down the VM display instead of scaling it up. Furthermore RedHat don’t even support virt manager anymore. They want you to use Cockpit. Honestly the all around best virtualization solution is probably VMWare or something like Gnome boxes or QuickEmu.
I would of agreed with you historically but these days I say libvirtd all the way.
Still having these issues very recently.
booting into windows?
Always install rEFInd Always keep a rEFInd USB stick around Basic Computer 101
Is this instead of grub, or in adding to?
Addition to, it’s basically a bootloader selector with some extra stuff
But then wouldn’t the Microsoft “fix” still bork up grub?
Microsoft doesn’t break grub, it does what is known as a “bootloader coup”. rEFInd is an easy way to fix without having to google magical console incantation after booting in an installer liveusb and then chrooting into the broken system
You USB boot that rEFInd stick and choose " install rEFInd" and you’re done.
The only catch is the rEFInd is kind of a maze to find the rEFInd .iso
It is here
http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.14.2/refind-flashdrive-0.14.2.zip/download
Oh, that sounds awesome!
“The SBAT value is not applied to dual-boot systems that boot both Windows and Linux and should not affect these systems,” the bulletin read. “You might find that older Linux distribution ISOs will not boot. If this occurs, work with your Linux vendor to get an update.”
Excuse me, those are the opposite of each other.
CVE-2022-2601 was discovered in 2022, but for unclear reasons, Microsoft patched it only last Tuesday.
