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Bypassing disk encryption on systems with automatic TPM2 unlock


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Since the initrd must reside in an unencrypted boot partition, an attacker can inspect it to learn how it decrypts the disk and also what type of filesystem it expects to find inside. Some distributions instead ship EFI executables that are pre-signed with the Microsoft keys, which allows them to enable secure boot by default without requiring the user to generate and enroll anything on their own. Then, initramfs will attempt to mount the rogue partition as the root filesystem (decryption failure will fall back to password entry), leaving pre-boot PCRs unchanged.

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