5 ms·

OS X Lion’s Internet Recovery tool is one more nail in the DVD’s coffin

19 points by mrsebastian 15y ago

franze 15y ago
DVD’s coffin? well, there never was a coffin, the DVD is long dead and rotted into nothingness a long time ago. but there never was a coffin, it just died by the wayside and nobody to bothered.
- talmand 15y ago
  That's strange, I seem to recall seeing DVDs in stores just the other day. Maybe the reports of its death are exaggerated?
gst 15y ago
The time when I bought a computer with a CD or DVD drive was more than 10 years ago. During the last years I've mostly used X-Series Thinkpads. Most Linux distributions have been installable via USB stick or Internet for a long time now and the only time when I was missing the drive so far were the scientific conferences where the proceedings were distributed on a CD. Good to see that also mainstream operating systems don't require this antique method of data transfer anymore.
sp332 15y ago
"Recovery partition" is misleading. This feature works even with a fresh hard disk. I assume it's some kind of netboot built into the EFI bios, but I'm just wondering how long it will be before someone hacks it to load other software, or even hijack it for malware.
- sudont 15y ago
  http://www.apple.com/macosx/recovery/ http://www.apple.com/macosx/recovery/ "newly-released Mac starting with the Mac mini and MacBook Air." The low-level "Internet Recovery" is custom firmware. And the malware could happen, but it would be like chopping off somebody's head, then re-growing the brainstem into a hijacked mind. Unlikely. It's much, much easier to hijack an existing install, than to exploit the install, corrupt the hard drive, force a complete re-install of a custom OS built with a malware kernel from somebody else's servers.
  - forgotusername 15y ago
    I think you're overestimating how hard this is, modulo how they implement firmware updates. EFI is an almost completely open spec, and it's easy to write code that runs within the EFI environment. Combine that with something like the approach taken in Stoned Bootkit and you have a viable option for persisting malware across reinstalls. In traditional PCs, BIOS reflash does not require any special signing key, or suchlike, and its trivial in a very small amount of code to splice an option ROM (code that executes automatically during power-on) into the BIOS of the running machine, and reflash it (slightly harder to do reliably). As far as I know current generation Macbooks don't perform any kind of signature check either. Unlike with traditional PCs, Apple has a relatively small number of hardware revisions, making this kind of attack even easier to implement.
LordBodak 15y ago
This works great until 10 years down the road you pick up an old Mac at a thrift store and discover that the internet recovery for Lion has been ended and the newer OS's aren't supported by the hardware.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- ddagradi 15y ago
  I'd be surprised if Apple didn't keep a whole 4GB around for Lion a lot longer than 10 years.
talmand 15y ago
What happens if the hard drive crashes and the partition is not available? A visit to the Apple Store I guess?
- quanticle 15y ago
  As stated elsewhere, its not a hard drive partition. The download software is built into the EFI firmware, so it'll work even with a completely blank hard drive.
ams6110 15y ago
I for one wish they had never been invented. The WORST consumer data storage medium ever was the CD/DVD. It had capacity, but was ridiculously fragile for a consumer product.
- zerohp 15y ago
  What do you do to your discs? I've never broken or damaged one by accident. They're not that fragile.
  - pbhjpbhj 15y ago
    Personally I've never damaged a disc. I've a few that have the foil flaked off (they're about 10 years old but have been kept out of sunlight and were brand name ones too). However a certain child damaged one of my GameCube Zelda discs recently ... scratched to hell in 15s. It's not like I can run cdparanoia on it either ...
- mentat 15y ago
  Surely you're not serious? The innovation that CDs and DVDs made possible is mind boggling. Digital music, video, gaming, none of these were possible with the existant storage densities and prices. They're clearly not the final solution to data storage but they bridged an important gap in bootstrapping widespread computer usage.
daimyoyo 15y ago
Does this mean you'd have to reload the entire 4GB file? Because given the quality of my home internet connection, that's about a 20 hour download. That's the reason I'm waiting for the USB drive. As an aside, I wonder if Apple has any plans to release a special Thunderbolt drive for Lion? I'd happily pay extra for that option.

19 points by mrsebastian 15y ago

DVD’s coffin? well, there never was a coffin, the DVD is long dead and rotted into nothingness a long time ago. but there never was a coffin, it just died by the wayside and nobody to bothered.

talmand 15y ago
That's strange, I seem to recall seeing DVDs in stores just the other day. Maybe the reports of its death are exaggerated?

gst 15y ago

The time when I bought a computer with a CD or DVD drive was more than 10 years ago. During the last years I've mostly used X-Series Thinkpads. Most Linux distributions have been installable via USB stick or Internet for a long time now and the only time when I was missing the drive so far were the scientific conferences where the proceedings were distributed on a CD. Good to see that also mainstream operating systems don't require this antique method of data transfer anymore.

sp332 15y ago

"Recovery partition" is misleading. This feature works even with a fresh hard disk. I assume it's some kind of netboot built into the EFI bios, but I'm just wondering how long it will be before someone hacks it to load other software, or even hijack it for malware.

sudont 15y ago
http://www.apple.com/macosx/recovery/ http://www.apple.com/macosx/recovery/ "newly-released Mac starting with the Mac mini and MacBook Air." The low-level "Internet Recovery" is custom firmware. And the malware could happen, but it would be like chopping off somebody's head, then re-growing the brainstem into a hijacked mind. Unlikely. It's much, much easier to hijack an existing install, than to exploit the install, corrupt the hard drive, force a complete re-install of a custom OS built with a malware kernel from somebody else's servers.
- forgotusername 15y ago
  I think you're overestimating how hard this is, modulo how they implement firmware updates. EFI is an almost completely open spec, and it's easy to write code that runs within the EFI environment. Combine that with something like the approach taken in Stoned Bootkit and you have a viable option for persisting malware across reinstalls. In traditional PCs, BIOS reflash does not require any special signing key, or suchlike, and its trivial in a very small amount of code to splice an option ROM (code that executes automatically during power-on) into the BIOS of the running machine, and reflash it (slightly harder to do reliably). As far as I know current generation Macbooks don't perform any kind of signature check either. Unlike with traditional PCs, Apple has a relatively small number of hardware revisions, making this kind of attack even easier to implement.

LordBodak 15y ago

This works great until 10 years down the road you pick up an old Mac at a thrift store and discover that the internet recovery for Lion has been ended and the newer OS's aren't supported by the hardware.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
ddagradi 15y ago
I'd be surprised if Apple didn't keep a whole 4GB around for Lion a lot longer than 10 years.

talmand 15y ago

What happens if the hard drive crashes and the partition is not available? A visit to the Apple Store I guess?

quanticle 15y ago
As stated elsewhere, its not a hard drive partition. The download software is built into the EFI firmware, so it'll work even with a completely blank hard drive.

ams6110 15y ago

I for one wish they had never been invented. The WORST consumer data storage medium ever was the CD/DVD. It had capacity, but was ridiculously fragile for a consumer product.

zerohp 15y ago
What do you do to your discs? I've never broken or damaged one by accident. They're not that fragile.
- pbhjpbhj 15y ago
  Personally I've never damaged a disc. I've a few that have the foil flaked off (they're about 10 years old but have been kept out of sunlight and were brand name ones too). However a certain child damaged one of my GameCube Zelda discs recently ... scratched to hell in 15s. It's not like I can run cdparanoia on it either ...
mentat 15y ago
Surely you're not serious? The innovation that CDs and DVDs made possible is mind boggling. Digital music, video, gaming, none of these were possible with the existant storage densities and prices. They're clearly not the final solution to data storage but they bridged an important gap in bootstrapping widespread computer usage.

daimyoyo 15y ago

Does this mean you'd have to reload the entire 4GB file? Because given the quality of my home internet connection, that's about a 20 hour download. That's the reason I'm waiting for the USB drive. As an aside, I wonder if Apple has any plans to release a special Thunderbolt drive for Lion? I'd happily pay extra for that option.