[ale] Sunday 05-22-05 6PM RUN-AS-ROOT CHALLENGE

[Jim Popovitch]

On Thu, 2005-05-19 at 15:26 -0400, Geoffrey wrote:
> Jason Day wrote:
> > On Thu, May 19, 2005 at 12:40:52AM -0400, Jim Popovitch wrote:
> > 
> >>>	- flashable hardware is still flashable.  Sure, some of them
> >>>	  have worked around their issues, but does it make sense to
> >>>	  assume they all have?  Nope.
> >>
> >>re-flashing is like fsck'ing.  IT IS NOT DESTRUCTIBLE.
> 
> I can write a piece of code that will trash the bios.  

that's the easy part.  Now, make it permanent.

> I'm not talking about flashing new code.  The bios won't even 
> begin to start, thus you can't reflash it because the box is DEAD.

This is just like deleting user data.... after the fact you go get a
backup and restore.  In this case you go get a bios image and re-program
the chip. No, this isn't something an enduser could do, but neither is a
OS backup in most cases.  However, BIOS "trashing" is not as bad as file
deletion.   So, by running as root you risk bios and non-backed-up data,
but can only restore bios.  Running as user bob you risk only data that
you can't recover without a backup.  What's your point?

-Jim P.