Details of BIOS security, Re: Intel to include DRM in new Pentium 4 series processors

[Brian Gladman]

From: "Peter Gutmann" <pgut001@cs.auckland.ac.nz>
To: <ukcrypto@chiark.greenend.org.uk>
Sent: Tuesday, September 17, 2002 10:38 AM
Subject: Re: Details of BIOS security, Re: Intel to include DRM in new
Pentium 4 series processors


> Matthew Astley <lists-ukcrypto@fruitcake.demon.co.uk> writes:
>
> >I would imagine cutting a track could protect the flash, if it were
> >accessible, but that's a bit hairy for most!
>
> Not necessarily (this is what Brian alluded to in his post).  Most flash
> memory isn't dumb memory but has a built-in microsequencer which handles a
> variety of simple commands.  You can't guarantee that, at the hardware
level,
> you've prevented all flash-damaging operations with only a write-protect
> jumper, particularly since some devices may contains undocumented commands
> (e.g. diagnostics) which you can't easily filter because you don't know
they
> exist.
>
> However, these types of attacks are fairly sophisticated, so while you'd
> expect someone thinking of attacking a crypto box would look at them, it's
> unlikely a script kiddie aiming for the MSIE buffer overflow du jour would
> bother.

And the problem is that the technology on which our safety and security as a
society depends is increasingly identical to the technology that we have in
our toasters.  And while we might not expect a script kiddie to attack our
infrastructure, I believe that there are people with considerable
sophistication that will want to do this if we give them the opportunity.

    Brian