Byron Stanoszek <gandalf@winds.org> said:
[...]
> However, the one point I failed to see is what the manufacturer *allows*
> you to do with the component. Now these methods are either undocumented,
> or the manufacturer provides binary-only programs to do these tasks. But,
> the biggest type of damage you can do to your hardware to render it
> instantly unusable is to reflash the firmware on the device with
> erroneous data.
The device (or the kernel, or...) can't possibly know it is truly
erroneous. And this _has_ to be done somehow. Only way around this would
be some kind of hardware key (setting jumpers or so). But then it isn't
"user-serviceable" anymore... same goes for "protect iopl() with ioctl()
and ..." The cracker _can_ get around it. And for dire predictions about
machines killed by next generation vira or trojans, there are still
chernobyled and melissaed motherboards somewhere around here. Destroyed,
for all practical purposes.
Blocking <whatever> inside the kernel isn't even 10% of the solution.
-- Dr. Horst H. von Brand mailto:vonbrand@inf.utfsm.cl Departamento de Informatica Fono: +56 32 654431 Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria +56 32 654239 Casilla 110-V, Valparaiso, Chile Fax: +56 32 797513- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Jul 23 2000 - 21:00:18 EST