4 ms·

I don't understand what do you mean by "bit rot". Bits don't rot like vegetables. They could last just fine for centuries, specially in protected, privilege par

I don't understand what do you mean by "bit rot". Bits don't rot like vegetables. They could last just fine for centuries, specially in protected, privilege parts of memory were firmware stays. NVDIA driver is the same for all cards. Tablets and smartphones are very homogeneous and the most widely used, Apple's totally closed source, including the hardware. Most people use Intel processors. Any of those vectors are very easy to target if you have the hardware and software source code.

guard-of-terra 12y ago
It's in wikipedia under "software rot". The problem is, firmware is pretty small. You can't fit much function there. Or it was; I imagine modern hard drives might have many megabytes of firmware which allows for pretty sophisticated hacks.
- ProAm 12y ago
  Firmware also operates on an extremely basic level, it's not suffer the same usability/compatibility like normal end users software.
  - guard-of-terra 12y ago
    Once it needs to communicate via network, it needs a gateway into normal user software somehow. Ditto for accessing the file system.
    - ProAm 12y ago
      I think that is even possible to do at a low level, see how they embed encrypted packets within other packets to sneak out of a network undetected [1]. Even if this technology only lasted 10-15 years that is a LONG time to have the upper hand. [1] http://www.jwz.org/blog/2015/02/ip-over-avian-carriers-nsa-edition/ http://www.jwz.org/blog/2015/02/ip-over-avian-carriers-nsa-e...
    - kbart 12y ago
      Sending/receiving an UDP packet is not difficult, even on low level. Knowing what filesystem lies above, implementing some crawler (aka search) is no rocket science too. Combine these two techniques, add some simple command protocol and you have access to any file on a targeted device.
- nitrogen 12y ago
  Hard drives and SSDs have more storage capacity than is actually presented to the OS, mostly for remapping bad sectors, possibly for storing internal metadata for the disk's operation. A malicious firmware could use that unmapped storage capacity to store larger, more versatile payloads.
MacsHeadroom 12y ago
I fail to see how it's relevant here, but physical bits certainly do rot. This is known as bit rot, data rot, data decay or data degradation. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_degradation#Decay_of_storage_media https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_degradation#Decay_of_stor...
- EpicEng 12y ago
  This is not the sort of "bit rot" that the parent was referring to.

guard-of-terra 12y ago

It's in wikipedia under "software rot". The problem is, firmware is pretty small. You can't fit much function there. Or it was; I imagine modern hard drives might have many megabytes of firmware which allows for pretty sophisticated hacks.

ProAm 12y ago
Firmware also operates on an extremely basic level, it's not suffer the same usability/compatibility like normal end users software.
- guard-of-terra 12y ago
  Once it needs to communicate via network, it needs a gateway into normal user software somehow. Ditto for accessing the file system.
  - ProAm 12y ago
    I think that is even possible to do at a low level, see how they embed encrypted packets within other packets to sneak out of a network undetected [1]. Even if this technology only lasted 10-15 years that is a LONG time to have the upper hand. [1] http://www.jwz.org/blog/2015/02/ip-over-avian-carriers-nsa-edition/ http://www.jwz.org/blog/2015/02/ip-over-avian-carriers-nsa-e...
  - kbart 12y ago
    Sending/receiving an UDP packet is not difficult, even on low level. Knowing what filesystem lies above, implementing some crawler (aka search) is no rocket science too. Combine these two techniques, add some simple command protocol and you have access to any file on a targeted device.
nitrogen 12y ago
Hard drives and SSDs have more storage capacity than is actually presented to the OS, mostly for remapping bad sectors, possibly for storing internal metadata for the disk's operation. A malicious firmware could use that unmapped storage capacity to store larger, more versatile payloads.

MacsHeadroom 12y ago

I fail to see how it's relevant here, but physical bits certainly do rot. This is known as bit rot, data rot, data decay or data degradation. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_degradation#Decay_of_storage_media https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_degradation#Decay_of_stor...

EpicEng 12y ago
This is not the sort of "bit rot" that the parent was referring to.