things like playing with the drive firmware as root should you wish
to.
Just like playing with nvrams, flash, etc, this is dangerous. But we
give people with root access _many_ ways to kill their hardware, and
even if they don't have the access directly it can always be inserted
by a module. Hard drives used to be able to be destroyed by just doing
the right seeks...
CIH virus reaked havoc on DOS/Windows because it was undetected, destroyed
the motherboard and required no special privilege to run.
Compare to what can be gathered from Andre's posts;
* requires root access (more than is needed on Windows)
* only works on IDE (less common in servers and permanently connected
machines - and less common than chipsets - motherboards, video cards,
etc - with rewriteable flash in modern systems)
* destroys only the controller board (less important than the data to
many - although as root you could destroy the much more valuable data
quite easily)
It sounds to me Andre wants to remove a feature for fear of it being used
for bad purposes (destroying hardware).
Protecting access to only permit root or root with given capabilities would
be the Linux model. Removing a feature out of fear of misuse is just
wrong - even if nobody yet has found a use for that feature.
Flame away...
David.
-- ---------------------------------------------- David Luyer Senior Network Engineer Pacific Internet (Aust) Pty Ltd Phone: +61 3 9674 7525 Fax: +61 3 9699 8693 Mobile: +61 4 1064 2258, +61 4 1114 2258 http://www.pacific.net.au NASDAQ: PCNTF << fast 'n easy >> ----------------------------------------------
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