Slashdot | Phoenix BIOS Phones Home?

Trei, Peter ptrei at rsasecurity.com
Wed Jun 20 06:53:33 PDT 2001


Jim:

You really don't have a good memory, do you? We dealt with this
topic just 3 weeks ago.

Check for the thread 'BIOS Spying' around June 1.

At that time I said:

---------------

Looking at this, there appears to be smoke without fire. It looks 
like they don't gather much in the way of data unless you 
download and install software via phoenixnet.

At worst, it's going to reset your homepage once, and you'll 
pop onto it the first time you start your browser. It's not even 
clear that this happens without asking.

What we really have here is Phoenix abusing it's power over 
BIOS content to pre-install an app without asking you. Barring 
further evidence of nefarious activity, we've all got much worse 
stuff to worry about.

The operative quote for this list may be:  "The question is not 
'Are you paranoid?'. Its: 'Are you paranoid enough?'" (Cadigan). 
That doesn't mean, however, that it's impossible to be to be 
*too* paranoid.

Peter Trei
---------------

To further expliain, this is no worse than Netscape or IE
starting with their default home pages. Also, if you to 
install a non-Microsoft OS, the canned app in the BIOS
can do absolutely nothing.

> ----------
> From: 	Jim Choate[SMTP:ravage at einstein.ssz.com]
> 
> http://slashdot.org/yro/01/06/19/2039216.shtml
> -- 
>        The Armadillo Group       ,::////;::-.          James Choate
> 
Peter Trei





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