RE: Security Use Requirements (and security issue with iSCSI boot deployment)

["Bernard Aboba" <aboba@internaut.com>]

>At the least it should be noted in Security Considerations that vendors
>should consider providing a mechanism for vendor-to-booter verification
>of a boot image.

Such a thing already exists. It's part of the PXE specification and
involves storing on the PC a public key that is used to sign the boot 
image. 

>It would be really nice if iSCSI-boot suggested a mechanism, so that
>it could be built into ROMs by manufacturers that are implementing
>iSCSI-boot and so that the hardware manufacturer could not use the
>mechanism to lock out alternative operating systems.

This capability is already built into PXE-compliant
boot ROMs. In fact, you may already have purchased a NIC that 
implements PXE!

I should note that there are some interesting issues that arise when 
using PXE to do secure iSCSI boot, but I'll leave that issue to another
discussion.