<DocScrutinizer05>
no true encryption but good enough for a lot of nonsense attacks, incl this one
<DocScrutinizer05>
btw on my boxen such an attack was futile anyway - no password auth allowed on any of them, only ssh key
<whitequark>
DocScrutinizer05: you could use timing+size then
<whitequark>
which is way less reliable due to cache effects though
<DocScrutinizer05>
but the right thing to do is to sell a HDD fw md5sum'er now
<DocScrutinizer05>
or HDDs with cryptographicaly secured fw ;-P
<DocScrutinizer05>
heck, a highsec BIOS that does a HDD FW checksum on early boot
<DocScrutinizer05>
UEFI must be capable to implement such shite
<DocScrutinizer05>
or you simply buy new hw each time you have suspicions that your box got rooted
<DocScrutinizer05>
;-P
<DocScrutinizer05>
but it with malware already installed XP
<DocScrutinizer05>
several stories about such backdoors in WLAN FW are urban legend
<DocScrutinizer05>
btw I wonder if it occurred to that hacker that the m3 core maybe does SMART, thermal management, and a few other "irrelevant" tasks
<DocScrutinizer05>
>>The Cortex-M3 handles... nothing? I could stop it and still have all hard disk functions.<<
<DocScrutinizer05>
awesome hack nevertheless
<DocScrutinizer05>
btw >>The kernel is built for a MMU-less CPU (the disk controller doesn't have one) and only has a driver for the serial port. A MMU-less kernel unfortunately needs a specially formatted bit of userspace too.<< been when I stopped trying to get any reasonable unixoid OS running on my Amiga1000
<DocScrutinizer05>
68010 has no MMU
<biot>
hence all the guru mediations :)
<biot>
well, that and all the bugs that tried to write to the wrong addresses
<DocScrutinizer05>
when I learned that all binaries of minix were meant to load on same virtual memory addr, I finally resigned
<DocScrutinizer05>
several year before I honestly looked into geting SCO(?) unix sources and a free PDP-11
<DocScrutinizer05>
they came of 5 tape reels or sth, for only a few 1000 USD
<DocScrutinizer05>
btw I had pretty few guru's on my amiga
<DocScrutinizer05>
plenty of RAM (some 8 MB or sth), and virually no games
<DocScrutinizer05>
and of course a havily cusomized kickstart
<roh>
.oO(thats no computer, its an electric heater which can do some easy calulations on the side)
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<DocScrutinizer05>
hehe, yep
<DocScrutinizer05>
for 1980'ish though it been fine, even when not top notch
<DocScrutinizer05>
if you refer to the PDP-11
<roh>
sure.. but maybe we should not build heaters anymore but 'cloud cluster computers' with watercooling ;)
<DocScrutinizer05>
the Amiga1000 I'm still sad I lost it
<DocScrutinizer05>
hell, that thing cost me a month's salary back when. And RAM another, HDD (50MB) a third
<DocScrutinizer05>
and it been worth every penny
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<kyak>
heh, yes, you simply reflash all firmwares that can be reflashed, along with OS clean install :)
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<wpwrak>
hellekin: the HD hacking could be useful for sending the spies watching over us something to have fun with
<DocScrutinizer05>
hehe
<DocScrutinizer05>
damn SATA, the good ol' IDE drives would even have allowed to completely take over the IDE "bus" and thus maybe rewrite the MBR of master drive
<DocScrutinizer05>
or the firmware ;-P
<wpwrak>
a friend once receives some malware that corrupted every nth bit written to disk. not sure if this was floppy or hard disk. it was a long time ago.
<DocScrutinizer05>
funny
<wpwrak>
"n" was a function of time. the interval got shorter. for several weeks, it wasn't noticeable at all.
<DocScrutinizer05>
eeeek
<wpwrak>
but yes, it must have involved floppies. because it also affected backups.
<DocScrutinizer05>
no write-verify?
<wpwrak>
it apparently read back fine at the level where this is done
<DocScrutinizer05>
long ago there's been a thing called verify-after-write (OWTTE)
<DocScrutinizer05>
ooooh
<wpwrak>
in the hdd case, you could use a PRNG, so the bit position is predictable. generate a new seed each time the disk powers up.
<wpwrak>
that way, you could "correct" the bad data when reading back
<DocScrutinizer05>
seems like sth similar is already implemented in virtually all modern HDD
<DocScrutinizer05>
sth like "BIOS HDD password"
<wpwrak>
yes, but this would be more subtle. you could still use the disk for a long time, with the amount of corrupt data slowly increasing.
<DocScrutinizer05>
aaaah, my "rocket" is charged again :-)
<wpwrak>
and any new damage would be completely hidden until you power-cycle. ideal for laptops.
<wpwrak>
as an added benefit, if the algorithm flips bits, you'd have a small number of transient errors that change each time you power-cycle
<wpwrak>
chances are that you'd never figure it out :)