Booting a PC from Vinyl for a Warmer, Richer OS

If you’ve scrolled through the list of boot options offered on any PC’s BIOS, it reads like a history of storage technology. Up top we have the options to boot from disk, often a solid-state drive, then USB disk, optical drive, removable media, and down the bottom there’s usually an …read more

Continue reading Booting a PC from Vinyl for a Warmer, Richer OS

Degrees of Freedom: Booting ARM Processors

Any modern computer with an x86 processor, whether it’s Intel or AMD, is a lost cause for software freedom and privacy. We harp on this a lot, but it’s worth repeating that it’s nearly impossible to get free, open-source firmware to run on them thanks to the Intel Management Engine …read more

Continue reading Degrees of Freedom: Booting ARM Processors

Official Arduboy Upgrade Module Nears Competition

We’ve been big fans of the Arduboy since [Kevin Bates] showed off the first prototype back in 2014. It’s a fantastic platform for making and playing simple games, but there’s certainly room for improvement. One of the most obvious usability issues has always been that the hardware can only hold …read more

Continue reading Official Arduboy Upgrade Module Nears Competition

Billions of Devices Impacted by Secure Boot Bypass

The “BootHole” bug could allow cyberattackers to load malware, steal information and move laterally into corporate, OT ,IoT and home networks. Continue reading Billions of Devices Impacted by Secure Boot Bypass

Bug in NVIDIA’s Tegra Chipset Opens Door to Malicious Code Execution

Researcher creates ‘Selfblow’ proof-of-concept attack for exploiting a vulnerability that exists in “every single Tegra device released so far”. Continue reading Bug in NVIDIA’s Tegra Chipset Opens Door to Malicious Code Execution

Analog Failures on RF Product Cause Production Surprise

A factory is a machine. It takes a fixed set of inputs – circuit boards, plastic enclosures, optimism – and produces a fixed set of outputs in the form of assembled products. Sometimes it is comprised of real machines (see any recent video of a Tesla assembly line) but more …read more

Continue reading Analog Failures on RF Product Cause Production Surprise

Arduino Leonardo Gets A Lockable Bootloader

Security is something that’s far too often overlooked in embedded devices. One of the main risks is that if the device doesn’t verify the authenticity of incoming firmware updates. [Walter Schreppers] was working on a USB password storage device, so security was paramount. Thus, it was necessary to develop a …read more

Continue reading Arduino Leonardo Gets A Lockable Bootloader

Want to Learn Ethernet? Write Your Own Darn AVR Bootloader!

There’s a school of thought that says that to fully understand something, you need to build it yourself. OK, we’re not sure it’s really a school of thought, but that describes a heck of a lot of projects around these parts.

[Tim] aka [mitxela] wrote kiloboot partly because he wanted an Ethernet-capable Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP) bootloader for an ATMega-powered project, and partly because he wanted to understand the Internet. See, if you’re writing a bootloader, you’ve got a limited amount of space and no device drivers or libraries of any kind to fall back on, so you’re going …read more

Continue reading Want to Learn Ethernet? Write Your Own Darn AVR Bootloader!