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Documentation: syfs-class-firmware-attributes: Lenovo Certificate sup…
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…port

Certificate based authentication is available as an alternative to
password based authentication.

The WMI commands are cryptographically signed using a separate
signing server and will be verified by the BIOS before being
accepted.

This commit details the fields that are needed to support that
implementation. At present the changes are intended for Lenovo
platforms, but have been designed to keep them as flexible as possible
for future implementations from other vendors.

Signed-off-by: Mark Pearson <markpearson@lenovo.com>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20220317214008.3459-1-markpearson@lenovo.com
Reviewed-by: Hans de Goede <hdegoede@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Hans de Goede <hdegoede@redhat.com>
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Mark Pearson authored and Hans de Goede committed Mar 18, 2022
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45 changes: 45 additions & 0 deletions Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-class-firmware-attributes
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Expand Up @@ -246,6 +246,51 @@ Description:
that is being referenced (e.g hdd0, hdd1 etc)
This attribute defaults to device 0.

certificate:
signature:
save_signature:
These attributes are used for certificate based authentication. This is
used in conjunction with a signing server as an alternative to password
based authentication.
The user writes to the attribute(s) with a BASE64 encoded string obtained
from the signing server.
The attributes can be displayed to check the stored value.

Some usage examples:
Installing a certificate to enable feature:
echo <supervisor password > authentication/Admin/current_password
echo <signed certificate> > authentication/Admin/certificate

Updating the installed certificate:
echo <signature> > authentication/Admin/signature
echo <signed certificate> > authentication/Admin/certificate

Removing the installed certificate:
echo <signature> > authentication/Admin/signature
echo '' > authentication/Admin/certificate

Changing a BIOS setting:
echo <signature> > authentication/Admin/signature
echo <save signature> > authentication/Admin/save_signature
echo Enable > attribute/PasswordBeep/current_value

You cannot enable certificate authentication if a supervisor password
has not been set.
Clearing the certificate results in no bios-admin authentication method
being configured allowing anyone to make changes.
After any of these operations the system must reboot for the changes to
take effect.

certificate_thumbprint:
Read only attribute used to display the MD5, SHA1 and SHA256 thumbprints
for the certificate installed in the BIOS.

certificate_to_password:
Write only attribute used to switch from certificate based authentication
back to password based.
Usage:
echo <signature> > authentication/Admin/signature
echo <password> > authentication/Admin/certificate_to_password


What: /sys/class/firmware-attributes/*/attributes/pending_reboot
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