Redhat

Red Hat has revealed a plan to to work with CPU-makers so that its wares can take advantage of in-silicon security features such as secure enclaves.

The company today told attendees at its 2018 Summit in San Francisco that it will work with major silicon shops, including Arm, Intel, and AMD, to move operations such as handling security keys into secured enclaves that are inaccessible to the operating system.

No-one among the rank and file at Red Hat seem to have seen this coming. In a move the Linux giant's staffers said was "shocking" and a "punch in the gut," long-time Red Hat chief technology officer Brian Stevens has resigned.

In a short press release, the company announced: "Brian Stevens will step down as CTO."

OpenBSD founder Theo de Raadt has slammed Red Hat and Canonical for the way they have reacted to Microsoft's introduction of "secure" boot along with Windows 8, describing both companies as wanting to be the new Microsoft.

Responding to a query from iTWire about what OpenBSD, widely recognised as the most security-conscious UNIX, would be doing to cope with "secure" boot, De Raadt said: "We have no plans. I don't know what we'll do. We'll watch the disaster and hope that someone with enough power sees sense."

Red Hat announced the results of its fiscal year, stating that the company surpassed 1 billion dollars in revenue. More importantly, Red Hat is said to be the first open source company ever to achieve this level of earnings, a feat that shows how viable the “free” software business has become.