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How To Secure The Windows 10 Boot Process



During the boot process, secure Boot will check for an embedded signature inside of the fireware module. If the signature match against a database of signature in Secure Boot, the nodule is allowed to execute.


Secure Boot protects the boot process against security attacks from malicious code like malware and ransomware. Secure Boot is firmware-dependent and requires that the computer BIOS is set to UEFI mode.




How to Secure the Windows 10 Boot Process



It is advisable to disable UEFI Secure Boot in the firmware setup manually before attempting to boot Arch Linux. Windows 8/8.1, 10 and 11 SHOULD continue to boot fine even if Secure boot is disabled. The only issue with regards to disabling UEFI Secure Boot support is that it requires physical access to the system to disable secure boot option in the firmware setup, as Microsoft has explicitly forbidden presence of any method to remotely or programmatically (from within OS) disable secure boot in all Windows 8/8.1 and above pre-installed systems


This section explains how to : install a linux bootloader on a partition instead of the MBR ; copy this bootloader to a partition readable by the windows bootloader ; use the windows bootloader to start said copy of the linux bootloader.


Computers that come with newer versions of Windows often have Secure Boot enabled. You will need to take extra steps to either disable Secure Boot or to make your installation media compatible with secure boot (see above and in the linked page).


The following assumes GRUB is used as a boot loader (although the process is likely similar for other boot loaders) and that Windows 10 will be installed on a GPT block device with an existing EFI system partition (see the "System partition" section in the Microsoft documentation for more information).


When it comes to pairing Bluetooth devices with both the Linux and Windows installation, both systems have the same MAC address, but will use different link keys generated during the pairing process. This results in the device being unable to connect to one installation, after it has been paired with the other. To allow a device to connect to either installation without re-pairing, follow Bluetooth#Dual boot pairing.


The Windows boot loop problem is often the result of a device driver, a bad system component or hardware such as the hard disk that causes a Windows system to spontaneously reboot in the middle of the boot process. The result is a machine that can never boot completely and is stuck in a reboot loop.


Agent Poettering offers a mechanism for tightening up the security of the system startup process on Linux machines, using TPM 2.0 hardware. In brief, what he sees as the problem is that on hardware with Secure Boot enabled, while the boot process up to and including the kernel is signed, the next step, loading the initrd, is not. That's what he wants to fix.


This works, but the problem is that locally generated initrds are potentially insecure. In principle, malware or an intruder could insert malicious code into the initrd, and it will be loaded every time your system boots, even if no other copy of that malicious code exists anywhere else on your hard disk.


For the avoidance of doubt, a PE file is a Microsoft "Portable Executable," as we explained when introducing the Redbean 2 multiplatform binary. Yes, that's how UEFI works; indeed, as he notes while explaining the boot process:


Another key security feature of Trusted Boot, supported by Microsoft Windows 10 and motherboards with an Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI), is Early Launch Antimalware (ELAM). Used in conjunction with Secure Boot, an ELAM driver can be registered as the first non-Microsoft driver that will be initialised on a workstation as part of the boot process, thus allowing it to verify all subsequent drivers before they are initialised. The ELAM driver is capable of allowing only known good drivers to initialise; known good and unknown drivers to initialise; known good, unknown and bad but critical drivers to initialise; or all drivers to initialise. To reduce the risk of malicious drivers, only known good and unknown drivers should be allowed to be initialised during the boot process.


An adversary with physical access to a workstation may be able to use a bootable CD/DVD or USB media to load their own operating environment. From this environment, they can access the local file system to gain access to sensitive information or the SAM database to access password hashes. In addition, an adversary that gains access to a stolen or unsanitised hard drive, or other removable media, will be to recover its contents when connected to another machine on which they have administrative access and can take ownership of files. To reduce this risk, AES-based full disk encryption should be used to protect the contents of hard drives from unauthorised access. The use of full disk encryption may also contribute to streamlining media sanitisation during decommissioning processes.


Bitlocker encryption process is different: Newer systems with Windows 10 Pro have their disk encrypted with Bitlocker. If you have such a system, please follow this tutorial to dual boot with Bitclocker encryption.


Have you ever read a tutorial on dual-booting your PC and found that you need to disable secure boot in order to achieve your goals? Yes, Secure Boot is a modern security feature built into Windows 10/11 (and Windows 8).


Moreover, Microsoft requires secure boot to be turned on to clean install Windows 11. The new OS has an all-new set of system requirements like Secure Boot support and TPM 2.0 support, unlike its predecessors.


This reduces the chances of unauthorized access to your device in case someone wants to steal data in your absence. However, the secure boot feature has faced some backlash as well, as it prevents people from doing some useful stuff on their machine. For example, running two operating systems at the same time.


Boot device not found error occurs when the hard disk does not support the system boot process. As it indicates, Windows OS can't find a bootable device to boot from. Usually, it can be an internal hard drive, external USB drive, optical CD/DVD ROM drive, and network adapter.


Nowadays, many users use UEFI boot to start up Windows as it has many significant advantages, like faster booting process and support for hard drives larger than 2 TB, more security features and so on. Although UEFI is more advanced and powerful than BIOS, It is still not widespread and not all motherboards support the new firmware. In fact, many older and less expensive motherboards still use the BIOS mode.


What you need to know is, the BIOS must run in 16-bit processor mode, and only has 1 MB of space to execute in. In this case, it has trouble initializing multiple hardware devices at once, leading to a slower boot process when it initializes all the hardware interfaces and devices on a modern PC.


With Secure Boot, everything starts pre-boot by requiring computers to have the updated, more secure, Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) and Trusted Platform Module (TPM) chips installed on the motherboard and used. Both chips require cryptographic approval before they will accept new code or configuration settings, and both allow the boot process to be cryptographically measured and verified. Earlier verified components often securely store the previously verified hash of later components, which must match, before the booting process can continue normally. Microsoft also refers to these processes as Measured Boot or Trusted Boot.


Both UEFI and TPM are open standards that any vendor or OS may use. UEFI replaced the more vulnerable BIOS chips, and the TPM chip hosts a core set of cryptographic features, including the secure storage of critical system cryptographic keys. Both chips allow any OS vendor to better maintain the integrity of their OS, and other applications, such as data storage encryption, during and after boot.


Windows also includes a feature known as Configurable Code Integrity (CI). CI allows only previously defined and trusted code to run after the trusted boot process is complete. CI is a major step forward in a general purpose OS in only allowing trusted code to run, but it takes significant planning, testing and resources to get it right for normal operations beyond what Microsoft has already tested and approved. Still, if you want to have the most secure Windows OS you can have, CI allows you to do it.


Microsoft Windows 10 also introduced an improved version of device health attestation. DHA allows OSes to be verified to have clean boot and other processes before continuing. What is included in the health check depends on the OS, the OS admin, and the service they use for DHA. Customers can do their own DHA checks or outsource the it to Microsoft or a third-party vendor.


Windows 10: Windows Defender Antivirus has proven to be a top notch and un-intrusive antimalware program, especially when deployed in its default state along with Windows other antimalware features like Smartscreen and Windows Defender Exploit Guard. Windows allows any antimalware program to load itself just after the critical OS boot processes and before any other, non-essential applications load with a featured called Early Loading Antimalware (ELAM).


I suspect its an UEFI boot issue, but I haven't been able to solve it on my local machine yet. Tried all solutions listed in this thread:- Disabling secure boot (makes sense)- changing boot order (should be irrelevant with an empty HDD file)- creating new SCSI controller with DVD drive


I tried: increased the RAM to 2500GB, turned off secure boot, placed iso image at root of C:\ on VM host, on a C:\VM folder, I gave everyone Full control and placed in iso in their but still not work, removed vNIC fro vm guest setting, enabled all Integration Services,enabled NUMA spanning, changed DVD scisi controller from #1 to #2, tried different ISO files, tried from a share.


Windows 11 requires Secure Boot to be enabled, which necessitates a signed secure network boot process. In order to use these signed executables, you must load the public certificate associated with them. 2ff7e9595c


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