Security question (sort of)

From: Chuck McManis <cmcmanis_at_mcmanis.com>
Date: Sat Mar 20 00:59:09 1999

At 06:25 AM 3/20/99 +0000, Eric wrote:
>In a flash BIOS, maybe, although that would be tend to be specific to a
>certain motherboard. There's no general way to write a virus that can trash
>the BIOS on any arbitrary motherboard, because unlike much of the
>"PC standard", there is not a stanard for how the flash BIOS programming
>works. Different motherboards use different types of flash chips that
>have different programming requirements.

*Note* This is hearsay as I didn't go with the AWARD BIOS for our system at
FreeGate, we used the AMI BIOS instead, however the hack does exist which
lends at least some credibility to the message.

I was told, by a person normally familiar with such things, that in an
effort to be "helpful" AWARD added some "internal use only" calls to their
BIOS that, when called, enable the FLASH for writing and can write to it.
Allegedly it is pretty clearly documented in the OEM kit. This saves on
manufacturers having to write their own BIOS update program since they can
use the "standard" one supplied by AWARD.

--Chuck
Received on Sat Mar 20 1999 - 00:59:09 GMT