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EFI Security Improvements & More For Linux 4.6

Written by Michael Larabel in Linux Kernel on 17 March 2016 at 08:24 AM EDT. 26 Comments

EFI-enabled systems will see some nice improvements with the upcoming Linux 4.6 kernel.

One of the big EFI changes for Linux 4.6 that was already delayed twice before is using separate EFI page tables when executing EFI firmware code, which is done in order to isolate the EFI context from the rest of the kernel. This obviously is a big help from a security perspective.

Linux 4.6 also will now run regular UEFI firmware with interrupts enabled, has various x86 EFI improvements, and also has various ARM64/AArch64 EFI improvements.

The full listing of EFI changes for the Linux 4.6 merge window can be found via this pull request.

26 Comments

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About The Author

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.