Am 02.01.2014 19:15, schrieb Sam Kuper:
As I understand it, there are two distinct reasons why some BLOBs, in certain systems, cannot be eliminated/replaced by executing appropriate software on those systems:
[...]
Option 3: The image is signed with some vendor key. You could replace it, but the hardware prevents running any unsigned alternative.
Regards, Patrick
On 02/01/2014, Patrick Georgi patrick@georgi-clan.de wrote:
Am 02.01.2014 19:15, schrieb Sam Kuper:
As I understand it, there are two distinct reasons why some BLOBs, in certain systems, cannot be eliminated/replaced by executing appropriate software on those systems:
Option 3: The image is signed with some vendor key. You could replace it, but the hardware prevents running any unsigned alternative.
I see that coming within case 2. The Intel CPU microcode I gave as an example has this problem, IIUC. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I see it as being like the Content Scramble System (CSS), AACS, etc, and we're waiting for someone to create the equivalent of DeCSS, etc, so that libre (or at least open source) alternative microcode can be made to exist that would actually work on the CPU.
In the case of CSS and AACS, software DVD/Blu-Ray/etc players were targeted rather than hardware ones. Unfortunately, with Intel microcode, we only have a hardware "player' of microcode: the Intel CPU, so it is more difficult for the community to solve the problem.
Regards,
Sam
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Patrick Georgi -
Sam Kuper