Running "rm -rf /" Is Now Bricking Linux Systems (phoronix.com)

An anonymous reader writes: For newer systems utilizing UEFI, running rm -rf / is enough to permanently brick your system. While it's a trivial command to run on Linux systems, Windows and other operating systems are also prone to this issue when using UEFI. The problem comes down to UEFI variables being mounted with read/write permissions and when recursively deleting everything, the UEFI variables get wiped too. Systemd developers have rejected mounting the EFI variables as read-only, since there are valid use-cases for writing to them. Mounting them read-only can also break other applications, so for now there is no good solution to avoid potentially bricking your system, but kernel developers are investigating the issue.

Comments

Re:What else did you think would happen.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I wouldn't expect rm -rf to brick my system. I would expect it to remove everything, and then I'd have to reinstall. I would not expect my computer to become unusable to the point that I couldn't reinstall an OS.

Re:Isn't this what --preserve-root is for?

[gnupun]

This looks like an EFI design bug. Why should EFI allow the OS or any other software brick the system by deleting its variables? Like OO, EFI should allow access to these variables through methods and not directly.

Re:This is why BIOS is separate

[Anonymous Coward]

You and a bunch of other people in this thread are continually missing the point, which is certainly not that you could somehow accidentally type rm -rf /. Nobody gives a fuck about that. The point is that you shouldn't be able to brick your hardware from user space, just as the GP has laid out.

There was a time not too long ago when malware could be dealt with by "simply" reinstalling the OS. Now malware can infect your PC's firmware, your USB sticks' and hard drives' firmware, make your graphics card go up in flames, and brick your motherboard.