this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2025
643 points (98.9% liked)

Greentext

7182 readers
604 users here now

This is a place to share greentexts and witness the confounding life of Anon. If you're new to the Greentext community, think of it as a sort of zoo with Anon as the main attraction.

Be warned:

If you find yourself getting angry (or god forbid, agreeing) with something Anon has said, you might be doing it wrong.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] mushroomman_toad@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Pros and cons of disabling the default Microsoft key:

(Assuming you have secure boot enabled, and want the security that comes from that)

pros:

  • You control your own key and have full choice over what software can start up on your computer, software cannot be approved by anybody else.
  • Your secure boot security model is not vulnerable to the risk of booting 3rd party software with known security vulnerabilities.
  • Sophisticated attackers with physical access to your computer cannot carry out an evil maid attack on your computer and convince it to trick you or steal your data.

cons:

  • You need to have software installed to manage the key. There is software available for Ubuntu and NixOS.
  • There are many buggy UEFI implementations out there that require the Microsoft key to load built-in oproms during standard boot, potentially bricking your computer.
  • Software that gains root access to your computer could steal your signing key, potentially negating the benefits of secure boot against non-evil maid attacks.
[–] felsiq@piefed.zip 2 points 1 day ago
  • There are many buggy UEFI implementations out there that require the Microsoft key to load built-in oproms during standard boot, potentially bricking your computer.

From what I’ve found looking into this before, nvidia graphics cards have these oproms so your own secure boot key + nvidia will brick your shit. Can anyone confirm or deny this? Are modern AMD cards any better for this? I’ve been itching to use my own keys for ages and this is the only thing holding me back