mirror of https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/
 help / color / mirror / Atom feed
From: Pavel Machek <pavel@suse.cz>
To: Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
Cc: mathias.schnarrenberger@gmx.de,
	Olaf van der Spek <olafvdspek@gmail.com>,
	linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: security: delete BIOS password in keyboard buffer during kernel bootup
Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2008 17:18:09 +0100	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20081111161808.GA4473@ucw.cz> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20081109110814.13a4c099@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>

On Sun 2008-11-09 11:08:14, Alan Cox wrote:
> On Sun, 9 Nov 2008 09:41:20 +0100
> Mathias Schnarrenberger <mathias.schnarrenberger@gmx.de> wrote:
> 
> > > What if my BIOS stores some critical info at that memory address?
> > > I don't think the kernel is the right place to work around this issue.
> > 
> > AFAIK every IBM PC compatible BIOS stores the keyboard buffer in this area.
> 
> Not every system we boot the x86 kernel on is a PC compatible.

OTOH we don't call BIOS from linux, so we assume that low 64K is
usable memory (unless marked otherwise in memmap, I guess).

Anyway, proper place to do clearing is bootloader; it interacts with
bios already, anyway...

-- 
(english) http://www.livejournal.com/~pavelmachek
(cesky, pictures) http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~pavel/picture/horses/blog.html

  reply	other threads:[~2008-11-11 16:18 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 10+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2008-11-08 10:00 Mathias Schnarrenberger
2008-11-08 14:27 ` Alan Cox
2008-11-08 14:36   ` Mathias Schnarrenberger
2008-11-08 16:39 ` Olaf van der Spek
2008-11-09  8:41   ` Mathias Schnarrenberger
2008-11-09 11:08     ` Alan Cox
2008-11-11 16:18       ` Pavel Machek [this message]
2008-11-11 16:54         ` Alan Cox
2008-11-12  8:51           ` Gerhard Mack
2008-11-09 15:36     ` Arjan van de Ven

Reply instructions:

You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:

* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
  and reply-to-all from there: mbox

  Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style

* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
  switches of git-send-email(1):

  git send-email \
    --in-reply-to=20081111161808.GA4473@ucw.cz \
    --to=pavel@suse.cz \
    --cc=alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk \
    --cc=linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org \
    --cc=mathias.schnarrenberger@gmx.de \
    --cc=olafvdspek@gmail.com \
    /path/to/YOUR_REPLY

  https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html

* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
  via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox

all inboxes | Powered by JetHome®