I actually am in the market for a new mobo and cpu.
Are there any mobo’s nowdays that don’t use UEFI? I just want an old traditional style BIOS with a jumper to restore it from a ROM chip if I get any malware, so I can actually trust my hardware.
I did force myself to deal with UEFI for the sake of windows, but gaming has gotten good enough on Linux, I don’t actually need to dual boot windows anymore.
So I don’t get it, I have my entire boot image in a signed EFI binary, the logo is in there as well. I don’t think I’m susceptible to this, right? I don’t think systemd-boot or the kernel reads an unsigned logo file anywhere. (Using secure boot)
Depending on how the UEFI is configured, a simple copy/paste command, executed either by the malicious image or with physical access, is in many cases all that’s required to place the malicious image into what’s known as the ESP, short for EFI System Partition, a region of the hard drive that stores boot loaders, kernel images, and any device drivers, system utilities, or other data files needed before the main OS loads.
Right, I know EFI images are stored in the EFI partition, but with secure boot, only signed images can be executed, so they’d need to steal someone’s signing key to do this.
I’ve never been a fan of the UEFI logo inserting itself into the boot screen. It’s basically just an advertisement for the hardware vendor because they’re jealous of the OS having the spotlight. And it’s an ad that, like so many other ads before it, screws over the security and privacy of the advertisee because fuck you that’s why.
I don’t know. It looks more aesthetically consistent. Your computer has to display something. Average users would be scared if it dumped logs on the display. so the vendor logo makes sense. It COULD just say loading, but this is a bit pedantic I think.
With UEFI, it goes “Motherboard Logo -> Motherboard Logo”
Sure, it’s more consistent, but the alternative is not user unfriendly, the only people it’s unfriendly to is the marketing wankers at Dell, Lenovo, Acer, etc.
When it comes to security, particularly at boot time, fuck the user. Users don’t interact with devices at boot time so it doesn’t matter if it shows a blank screen, a mile of logs or a screaming clown penis. If it was up to users no device or service would have a password or security of any kind, and every byte of information about your life would be owned by 'The Cloud." Let the marketing wanks insert their logo into the Windows boot process,
I want to insert my own logo into the boot process, and I want these ducking vendors to properly validate and assess their mother ducking software. But nooo, penetration tests and any remediations are too expensive for these pieces of bit. Why do it when you can just stick your dick in everyone’s face, right?
The article didn’t mention this, but would disabling the UEFI logo in the boot screen mitigate the vulnerability until proper patches get rolled out? (Or honestly at this point, I’d keep it disabled even after it’s patched in case they didn’t patch it right. UEFI’s are all proprietary so it’s not like you can check.) Since the vulnerability is in the image parser, would bypassing that be enough?
At first I was like WTF but actually it makes sense. A screen showing an error code is much better than a hard reset, blinking cursor, kernel panic, or just black screen you usually get when something bad happens on linux.
As people have said in some of the many, many other threads on this subject, if they really wanted to copy someone else's style of full-screen error message they'd have done much better to go with "Guru Meditation"
What a sensational, over blown article. ArsTechnica this is shitty journalism and you should know it.
The headline would be about as correct if it said “SystemD update will bring Amiga’s Guru Meditation screen to Linux.”
This update has nothing to do with Windows. Error displays with additional information about the crash is not exclusive to windows, nor new. In fact a Kernel Panic screen happened in Unix.
The majority of linux articles have me checking the comments first to see if someone talks about ridiculous click bait crap, honestly saved me a lot of time.
I suppose that’s the main problem, I didn’t check the article since the title reeks clickbaity enough. However I wouldn’t share an article if the the title obviously is a clickbait, I’m sure there are bunch of respectable sources about this development.
I worked at a pharmacy and the only time it actually happened was when a patient tried to sell their Vicodin to an undercover cop outside the store. The cop came in and asked for the information about the prescription and we gave it to him.
Yeah, I didn’t say any of that but ok. HIPAA/employers actually require you to give law enforcement information in a variety of situations, including specifically the situation I mentioned:
To report PHI that the covered entity in good faith believes to be evidence of a crime that occurred on the covered entity’s premises (45 CFR 164.512(f)(5)).
Is that without a warrant? It wouldn’t be hard to impersonate a cop or even a cop with a grudge against someone to come find out what medications they are taking to dig further into someone’s lives and ruin said life.
Yes, without a warrant. It’s in the Privacy Notice in any retail pharmacy.
Impersonating a cop is a pretty big step that’s illegal in its own right but we did have moms trying to see if their adult daughter was on birth control, but that’s pretty easy to stop. Just lock their profile and ask the patient to make up a passcode or only deal with them in person.
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