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Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2008 17:18:09 +0100
From: Pavel Machek <pavel@...e.cz>
To: Alan Cox <alan@...rguk.ukuu.org.uk>
Cc: mathias.schnarrenberger@....de,
Olaf van der Spek <olafvdspek@...il.com>,
linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: security: delete BIOS password in keyboard buffer during
kernel bootup
On Sun 2008-11-09 11:08:14, Alan Cox wrote:
> On Sun, 9 Nov 2008 09:41:20 +0100
> Mathias Schnarrenberger <mathias.schnarrenberger@....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...
--
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(cesky, pictures) http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~pavel/picture/horses/blog.html
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