[OLPC-devel] Requirements for a field BIOS reflashing tool.

[Jim Gettys]

That's a very good point.  Maybe we can defeat unsophisticated phishing
attacks without much trouble.

One idea might be if the embedded controller flash control line be able
to be disabled after boot entirely, until the next machine reset.

Under normal circumstances, we'd have Linux disable the flash enable.

We might then require a reboot of Linux (or at least Linux BIOS) with a
special flag set that would allow the enable of the flash (by not
calling this irreversible disable interface) before being able to
reflash the BIOS.

Or do others have other good ideas along these lines?
                                    Regards,
                                        - Jim


On Fri, 2006-06-16 at 18:07 +0200, Carl-Daniel Hailfinger wrote:
>                              From: 
> Carl-Daniel Hailfinger
> <c-d.hailfinger.devel.2006 at gmx.net>
>                                To: 
> jg at laptop.org
>                                Cc: 
> OLPC Developer's List
> <devel at laptop.org>, Dave Woodhouse
> <david at woodhou.se>
>                           Subject: 
> Re: [OLPC-devel] Requirements for a
> field BIOS reflashing tool.
>                              Date: 
> Fri, 16 Jun 2006 18:07:26 +0200
> (12:07 EDT)
> 
> 
> Jim Gettys wrote:
> > We are planning, as I believe has been mentioned on the mailing
> list, to
> > have the embedded controller disable the flash write line unless and
> > until the space bar has been held down for a 5 second period, to
> make it
> > difficult for worms/viruses to "brick" the machines.
> 
> I thought that the space bar has to be he 
-- 
Jim Gettys
One Laptop Per Child