71–80 of 142 posts
Not really that surprising. Your average laptop nowadays probably has more ARM cores than x86 cores. They're in all kinds of peripherials like wifi controllers, power supplies, harddisk controllers, GPU job control, heck even AMD's recent APUs come with an integrated Cortex-A5.[1] ARM cores are everywhere, people just don't know about it. [1] http://www.anandtech.com/show/6007/amd-2013-apus-to-include-...
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I write a piece of malware that pops the camera on long enough to snap a single frame and then turn back off. The LED blinks, quite possibly too fast for you to notice. OTOH, you can delay the LED and have it very noticeably on for a second or two when it's software-controlled.
Good point, but then why not implement the delay in immutable (and trivial and cheap) hardware? Is this not both simpler and more secure?
Not really that surprising. Your average laptop nowadays probably has more ARM cores than x86 cores. They're in all kinds of peripherials like wifi controllers, power supplies, harddisk controllers, GPU job control, heck even AMD's recent APUs come with an integrated Cortex-A5.[1] ARM cores are everywhere, people just don't know about it. [1] http://www.anandtech.com/show/6007/amd-2013-apus-to-include-...
Whenever this topic occurs, I send this in http://spritesmods.com/?art=hddhack&page=1 Ubiquitous com...fusion.
I had a hard drive that had a firmware fault, and I repaired it using a USB-Serial converter, taking the pcb off the drive to temporarily mask off a connector, and then issuing a couple of commands. http://superuser.com/questions/365999/how-do-i-recover-data-...
http://superuser.com/questions/365999/how-do-i-recover-data-...
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And what if I turn on the camera for a tenth of a second, take a picture, and turn it off. You won't notice the LED being on for a tenth of a second. Software makes it easier to prevent such things.
Just wrote a test app on macOS that initializes the camera, gets the first video frame, and turns it off. You definitely notice the bright green LED being on for a split second.
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They have a point though. Why would there be any software that controls the LED? Is it not more secure to have it hooked up directly to the camera power line and turn them both on and off inseparably?
I write a piece of malware that pops the camera on long enough to snap a single frame and then turn back off. The LED blinks, quite possibly too fast for you to notice. OTOH, you can delay the LED and have it very noticeably on for a second or two when it's software-controlled.
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Whenever this topic occurs, I send this in http://spritesmods.com/?art=hddhack&page=1 Ubiquitous com...fusion.
I love that. I had a hard drive that had a firmware fault, and I repaired it using a USB-Serial converter, taking the pcb off the drive to temporarily mask off a connector, and then issuing a couple of commands. http://superuser.com/questions/365999/how-do-i-recover-data-... http://superuser.com/questions/365999/how-do-i-recover-data-...
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Why not?
The basic idea is that this is an area of the system that even you as the owner cannot inspect, but I'll let others do the bulk of the explaining: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html http://boingboing.net/2012/08/23/civilwar.html http://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html
Quick question -- what's so good about ARM specifically? Aren't there other minimal architectures, maybe even one with lower/no licensing costs?
Besides, ARM is a fine architecture and it's popular these days, so why not?
This would have provided a truly trusted mechanism for apps to communicate with the user. For instance, your bank could authenticate itself with you via the Touch Bar.. If the Touch Bar display is controlled from the host OS, then malware could pretend to be your bank, on the Touch Bar.
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Given that iSight and Facetime HD cameras required drivers and firmware to get running under Linux, I would be positively surprised if the new camera is easier to set up, meaning I don't think it works right now. Even the existing camera support isn't 100%, with features like suspend/resume being flaky, all due to it being reverse engineered. That said, the options for developer laptops has shifted in favor of genera…
Sure, but the laptops you describe do not have secure enclave. If I want that level of security on Linux what can I do?