In this advanced class, students examine secure boot as both a defensive measure and an exploitable weakness. The instructor first explains the purpose and flow of secure boot, showing how cryptographic checks are meant to prevent unauthorized code execution. From there, the weaknesses of real implementations are exposed. Students learn three practical bypass strategies: inducing faults to disrupt validation, forcing single-user mode to escalate privileges, and manipulating firmware images directly to subvert checks. This class makes clear that secure boot, while marketed as bulletproof, is often vulnerable to precise hardware-level intervention.

Learning Objective
Understand secure boot’s protections and apply multiple bypass techniques.

Training Outcomes

• Describe the secure boot process and its intended protections

• Identify weaknesses in implementation that open attack surfaces

• Execute bypass techniques including fault injection, single-user login forcing, and firmware manipulation

Hands-On Experience

• Trigger secure boot faults and observe validation failures

• Alter boot parameters to drop into single-user mode

• Manipulate firmware components to disable or weaken secure boot enforcement