On 7/29/2015 3:12 AM, Antoine Verheijen wrote: > Putting my security hat on: certified drivers does not provide ANY > additional degree of security whatsoever. It merely states that the > certifier has blessed it using whatever criteria they use (in many > cases, simply financial payment). > > What guarantee(s) is the certifier prepared to live up to via their > certification? If none, why is it required?
Certification provides quality control. Microsoft's signing of the kernel drivers does not involve any payment. Microsoft is willing to sign any drivers that have passed the required quality control checks which include test suites, static analysis, and feature/capability lists. The only additional security benefit of Microsoft signing the drivers as opposed to permitting vendors to use issued cross signing certificates is that a vendor cannot longer be hacked and have their signing key be used without their knowledge to sign unapproved binaries without a paper trail. Jeffrey Altman
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