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Mandrake Linux 9.2 and self-destructing CD-ROM drives

Mandrake Linux 9.2 and self-destructing CD-ROM drives

Posted Oct 30, 2003 16:07 UTC (Thu) by hentosh (guest, #6115)
Parent article: Mandrake Linux 9.2 and self-destructing CD-ROM drives

The bug isn't really as bad as it sounds. The FLUSH command is an ATAPI command 35h. The FLASH_FIRMWARE command was an ATA 35h command. The problem wasn't that LG reused an ATAPI flush command to flash the firmware. The problem was that the firmware didn't at this point verify if it was an ATAPI command or an ATA command.

This case was probably missed in testing since the ATAPI command for FLUSH didn't make sense to send to a CDROM device (as stated above).


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Poor CD-ROM design?

Posted Oct 31, 2003 23:45 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link]

What gets me about this is how happily the drive overwrites its firmware with trash. If I were designing a "flash firmware" command, I think I'd stick some kind of signature and/or CRC in there to make absolutely sure that the data being supplied was intended as firmware for the device. Think of all the ways you could intentionally send a "flash firmware" command, but unintentionally send the wrong data.


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