Yet Another Compromising Preinstalled "Glitch" In Lenovo Laptops

New submitter execthis writes: Japanese broadcaster NHK is reporting that yet another privacy/security-compromising "glitch" has been found to exist in preinstalled software on Lenovo laptops. The article states that the glitch was found in Spring and that in late July Lenovo began releasing a program to uninstall the difficult-to-remove software. The article does not specify, but it could be referring to a BIOS utility called Lenovo Service Engine (LSE) for which Lenovo has released a security advisory with links to removal tools for various models.

Comments

Its a dumb feature

[Karmashock]

The last thing I want is my firmware getting updated automatically.

I'd really like for all writable memory in my computer to be removable. And that includes the bios memory. Have it be a micro SD card or something.

Here someone will say it will make the machine take 1 second longer to boot up or OH NOES the mobo will cost 10 cents more to make. But its worth it. It means you can audit the system to check for viruses really easily. You pull the chip, plug it into a clean system, and scan it. Or if you prefer... wipe it. Write the whole thing with ones then zeros... and then flash it with a proper version of the bios.

And this also means that corrupted bios memory is less of a problem. You can pull the chip. Sure, if the processors or something else is damaged then this won't help. But i've had a few mobos that were totally fine except the bios was so corrupt you couldn't flash a fresh version. With this change, that problem is gone.

Cue people saying "you can't do that because no one has done it that way yet"... climb a fucking tree so I can throw bananas at you then, you filthy animal! :-D

Re:Its a dumb feature

[Karmashock]

I want the want the writable memory chip to be a micro SD card. or something equally easy to plug into another machine to independently wipe it and verify that its wiped.

Let me add some additional benefits of this... DRIVERS.

If we use an SD card, then we can put more stuff on it than just the bios. OR the bios could be fucking massive. Either concept has some interesting possibilities.

Imagine if the OS queried the motherboard for drivers. We could store viable copies of the drivers the system needs to use most of the installed hardware. That's nifty. Reinstall... no need to go hunting around for the right driver files. Automatically installed... actually. Not in theory... but actually. Anyone that has built a lot of machines knows what I'm talking about.

And a giant bios could mean the bios could have a lot of additional functionality built into it. Not just the man behind the curtain.