Slashdot | Phoenix BIOS Phones Home?

[Ray Dillinger]

On Wed, 20 Jun 2001, Paul E. Robichaux wrote:

>Well, where I come from this is useful functionality! In combination with a
>feature called RIS (remote installation service) in Windows 2000, you can
>create a library of canned machine images and blast them out to machines over
>the network. One of our major customers has cut the time necessary to replace
>a failed machine down to about 15 minutes: plug in the new machine, hit F12
>during boot to trigger PXE, lay down the image received from the RIS server,
>user logs in, and voila! 

Interesting.  So, in theory, someone could do their thing at a central 
console and next morning everybody at the company could be looking 
at their new linux desktop?  :-) The thought amuses me, but then so
does the thought of an outlook virus that installs RedHat.

I don't deny that such tools are useful when used as intended.  So is 
a sledgehammer, but that certainly doesn't stop it from being a highly  
destructive weapon that can be turned against its owner.

What gets me is that this contains a HUGE potential for security 
compromise, and people who don't know it exists aren't being given 
an opportunity to NOT get it.

				Bear