Verified boot and filesystem choices

Demi Marie Obenour
2025-06-14T01:24:27Z

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Bcachefs is not very stable right now, and BTRFS is not a good choice
from a verified boot perspective. f2fs is what is used in Android
and ext4 is used in Chromebooks, so they at least have the backing of
Google's security team when it comes to vulnerabilities involving
maliciously crafted filesystem images. BTRFS doesn't.

The reason this matters for Spectrum is that verified boot aims to
prevent system compromise from persisting across reboots, and an
attacker who has compromised a Spectrum system can craft whatever
image they want on the writable volume.

Would it make sense to use f2fs or ext4? That means no reflinks
and no snapshots, which would be annoying at least. Another option
might be to use FUSE for the writable volume, with kernel filesystems
only used for the (signed and dm-verity protected) root volume.
This is the only option supported by Linux's upstream maintainers,
who (with the notable exception of Kent Overstreet) appear to have
no interest in hardening filesystems against maliciously crafted
images.