Re: disk-destroyer.c

From: Peter Svensson (petersv@psv.nu)
Date: Thu Jul 20 2000 - 20:03:43 EST


On Thu, 20 Jul 2000, Andre Hedrick wrote:

> The object is to protect this from happening even if you are ROOT or have
> stolen ROOT priviledges.

Useless. If you have acheived root privileges you can just substitute the
ide drivers or load a module that bypasses all the checks. Now, if the
securelevel system or the capabilities system become solid enough there
will be a good reason for this patch. In fact it is necessary.

At the moment it is not a problem though. As root you can reflash the disk
through some use of ioremap. You can even reflash the bios. Perhaps
someone can even figure out a way to abuse the microcode updates of an
Intel chip to fry the cpu.

At the moment I don't think it is a very high priority. It is a
preparation for the future but i suspect there are more pressing problems.

Peter

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