

OS X Lion’s Internet Recovery tool is one more nail in the DVD’s coffin - mrsebastian
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/90602-os-x-lions-internet-recovery-tool-is-one-more-nail-in-the-dvds-coffin

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sp332
"Recovery partition" is misleading. This feature works even with a fresh hard
disk. I assume it's some kind of netboot built into the EFI bios, but I'm just
wondering how long it will be before someone hacks it to load other software,
or even hijack it for malware.

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sudont
<http://www.apple.com/macosx/recovery/>

"newly-released Mac starting with the Mac mini and MacBook Air."

The low-level "Internet Recovery" is custom firmware. And the malware could
happen, but it would be like chopping off somebody's head, then re-growing the
brainstem into a hijacked mind. Unlikely.

It's much, much easier to hijack an existing install, than to exploit the
install, corrupt the hard drive, force a complete re-install of a custom OS
built with a malware kernel from somebody else's servers.

~~~
forgotusername
I think you're overestimating how hard this is, modulo how they implement
firmware updates.

EFI is an almost completely open spec, and it's easy to write code that runs
within the EFI environment. Combine that with something like the approach
taken in Stoned Bootkit and you have a viable option for persisting malware
across reinstalls.

In traditional PCs, BIOS reflash does not require any special signing key, or
suchlike, and its trivial in a very small amount of code to splice an option
ROM (code that executes automatically during power-on) into the BIOS of the
running machine, and reflash it (slightly harder to do reliably). As far as I
know current generation Macbooks don't perform any kind of signature check
either.

Unlike with traditional PCs, Apple has a relatively small number of hardware
revisions, making this kind of attack even easier to implement.

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LordBodak
This works great until 10 years down the road you pick up an old Mac at a
thrift store and discover that the internet recovery for Lion has been ended
and the newer OS's aren't supported by the hardware.

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gst
The time when I bought a computer with a CD or DVD drive was more than 10
years ago. During the last years I've mostly used X-Series Thinkpads.

Most Linux distributions have been installable via USB stick or Internet for a
long time now and the only time when I was missing the drive so far were the
scientific conferences where the proceedings were distributed on a CD.

Good to see that also mainstream operating systems don't require this antique
method of data transfer anymore.

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daimyoyo
Does this mean you'd have to reload the entire 4GB file? Because given the
quality of my home internet connection, that's about a 20 hour download.
That's the reason I'm waiting for the USB drive. As an aside, I wonder if
Apple has any plans to release a special Thunderbolt drive for Lion? I'd
happily pay extra for that option.

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ams6110
I for one wish they had never been invented. The WORST consumer data storage
medium ever was the CD/DVD. It had capacity, but was ridiculously fragile for
a consumer product.

~~~
zerohp
What do you do to your discs? I've never broken or damaged one by accident.
They're not that fragile.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Personally I've never damaged a disc. I've a few that have the foil flaked off
(they're about 10 years old but have been kept out of sunlight and were brand
name ones too).

However a certain child damaged one of my GameCube Zelda discs recently ...
scratched to hell in 15s. It's not like I can run cdparanoia on it either ...

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talmand
What happens if the hard drive crashes and the partition is not available? A
visit to the Apple Store I guess?

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quanticle
As stated elsewhere, its not a hard drive partition. The download software is
built into the EFI firmware, so it'll work even with a completely blank hard
drive.

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franze
DVD’s coffin? well, there never was a coffin, the DVD is long dead and rotted
into nothingness a long time ago. but there never was a coffin, it just died
by the wayside and nobody to bothered.

~~~
talmand
That's strange, I seem to recall seeing DVDs in stores just the other day.
Maybe the reports of its death are exaggerated?

