Signing VirtualBox Kernel Modules

These are the steps I followed enable VirtualBox on my laptop without disabling UEFI Secure Boot. They’re nearly identical to the process described on Øyvind Stegard’s blog, save for a few key details. The images here are borrowed from the Systemtap UEFI Secure Boot Wiki.

1. Install the VirtualBox package (this might be different for your platform). src=’https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/rpm/fedora/virtualbox.repo’ dst=’/etc/yum.repos.d/virtualbox.repo’ sudo curl ${src} > ${dst} dnf check-update sudo dnf install VirtualBox-6.0
2. Create an RSA key pair to sign kernel modules. name=”$(getent passwd $(whoami) | awk -F: ‘{print $5}’)” out_dir=’/root/module-signing’ sudo mkdir ${out_dir} sudo openssl \ req \ -new \ -x509 \ -newkey \ rsa:2048 \ -keyout ${out_dir}/MOK.priv \ -outform DER \ -out ${out_dir}/MOK.der \ -days 36500 \ # This is probably waaay too long. -subj “/CN=${name}/” sudo chmod 600 ${out_dir}/MOK* Note the absence of the -nodes option from Øyvind’s post. With this option openssl will create a private key with no passphrase. The omission of this option prompts for a passphrase, which seems like a good idea for something as important as a kernel module signing key.
3. Import the MOK (“Machine Owner Key”) so it can be trusted by the system. sudo mokutil –import /root/module-signing/MOK.der This will prompt for a password. The password is only temporary and will be used on the next boot. It does not have to be the same as the signing key passphrase.
4. Reboot your machine to enter the MOK manager EFI utility.
   • Select Enroll MOK.
   • Select Continue.
   • Select Yes to enroll the keys.
   • Enter the password from earlier.
   • Select OK to reboot.

• Verify the key has been loaded by finding the it in the output of

dmesg | grep '[U]EFI.*cert'

Create a script for signing all the VirtualBox kernel modules.

#!/bin/sh

readonly hash_algo='sha256'
readonly key='/root/module-signing/MOK.priv'
readonly x509='/root/module-signing/MOK.der'

readonly name="$(basename $0)"
readonly esc='\\e'
readonly reset="${esc}[0m"

green() { local string="${1}"; echo "${esc}[32m${string}${reset}"; }
blue() { local string="${1}"; echo "${esc}[34m${string}${reset}"; }
log() { local string="${1}"; echo "[$(blue $name)] ${string}"; }

# The exact location of `sign-file` might vary depending on your platform.
alias sign-file="/usr/src/kernels/$(uname -r)/scripts/sign-file"

[ -z "${KBUILD_SIGN_PIN}" ] && read -p "Passphrase for ${key}: " KBUILD_SIGN_PIN
export KBUILD_SIGN_PIN

for module in $(dirname $(modinfo -n vboxdrv))/*.ko; do
  log "Signing $(green ${module})..."
  sign-file "${hash_algo}" "${key}" "${x509}" "${module}"
done

This script differs from Øyvind’s in two aspects. First, and most importantly, it has C O L O R S . Second, it uses the magic $KBUILD_SIGN_PIN environment variable that doesn’t appear anywhere in the sign-file usage. I went spelunking in the Linux source for it, but in hindsight I could have just read the docs on manual module signing… I wrote this script to /root/bin/sign-vbox-modules as that’s usually on root‘s $PATH.

Execute the aforementioned script as root.

sudo chmod 700 /root/bin/sign-vbox-modules
sudo -i sign-vbox-modules

Load the vboxdrv module.

sudo modprobe vboxdrv