Spyware in your BIOS ROM chip??

[snarfll]

Been wracking my brain(good luck there )and searching my favs trying to find it again, but no luck so far.

It was an article that said Phoenix/Award has struck a deal with several Motherboard mfg's including Abit,Aopen and others to slip a phone home application into their ROM chips under the guise of helping the buyer to understand and configure BIOS settings.

If true, wouldn't this be a piece of spyware that NO one could get rid of?

Can anyone shed any light on this?(i'll keep looking and post back if/when i find the article.

Sounds like a "bummer" to me!!



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When your through learning,,,your through.

[Nick Grana]

Have searched but came up empty on any bios spyware. Doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Have found this interesting though. Probably already discussed in previous posts but haven't reviewed.
http://grc.com/optout.htm
GRC.com is where we picked up nasties.reg to add to our secure sites list.
We are space spyware things.

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"My Insanity Is Hereditary. I Got It From My Children."

[Train]

snarfll
It was in the Langalist in the last couple/three weeks. Lost my copy kids!!!

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SMILE
and post back
[ Book mark this post to find it again]

[ylen13]

check out this post http://www.pcmech.com/forum/showthre...threadid=13631

[IMM]

A long standing question which I have not yet pursued deeply results from the fact that a bios is about 256k and I can account for some more space with standard interface stuff but the bios chips are growing in size (what was 64K once is now 1Meg or 2Meg or 4meg). That's a lot of storage which doesn't go away when you disconnect the battery!

[snarfll]

Thanks guys, the Langa list was where i saw it. But it was late and i was tired and may have deleted instead of saving it.

The part that bothers me the most i think, is that Phoenix seems to pretty much have a "lock" on bios chips nowadays. Lack of competition is almost as bad as Micro$oft's in many ways.

Guess one way to possibly squelch this would be to let Mobo mfg's know that it's not the best way to go for some. Don't know if they would pay attention,,but might be worth a' shot?

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When your through learning,,,your through.

[DanC]

Here's more discussion on BIOS Spyware.

It's not new, just not well known.

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"If you look at the sun without shielding your eyes, you'll go blind. If you look at the moon without covering your eyes, you'll become a poet." --Serge Bouchard

[This message has been edited by DanC (edited 06-13-2001).]

[snarfll]

Thanks for the link DanC.
Looks like a good place to be. Definitely added to favs.

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When your through learning,,,your through.