An Effort Making An Open-Source Radeon Video BIOS

[dfx.]

It does what firmware is suppose to do, which involves controlling all the components inside the GPU. If there were really such 'broken things' as you say there are, then why don't we see these 'broken things' on Windows? The very fact that BIOS updates are never given for GPUs is a testament that such things don't happen. The only 'broken things' I see on Linux are graphics drivers and proper OpenGL libraries.

u-hu, riiight. if you haven't stepped into a shit yet, it doesn't mean that shit doesn't exist, Sherlock.
as a man, who patched VBIOS'es in his cards for various reasons, including inadequate defaults, on his Windows-running PCs as long as 10 years ago, i can tell that you don't know what you blabbering about.

PS: and "the very fact that BIOS updates are never given for GPUs is a testament that" VBIOS updates are easy to fuck up, not highly necessary to run the card at all (like with MB BIOS'es and their CPU support) and VBIOS faults are more easily worked-around with proprietary driver updates that override them.

All communications have to go through this BIOS, else there wouldn't be much point in making a BIOS

no, they don't

Do you really think multibillion dollar companies would have their products running on dysfunctional BIOSs?

and don't get me started on MB BIOS'es and firmwares on popular accessory devices. so... fuck-yes !

[mmstick]

If anybody could just 'hack it themselves' then it would have been long done. Look at your history, RadeonHD driver, where it was proposed to use the registers directly without Atombios. RadeonHD didn't evolve vast enough (much harder) and people didn't really care for it. But that's with a lot of things in life, Usually things that are 'better', be it technically or ethically, get little support. Sad, but true.


Ok that's just the most stupidest answer here. Because they do work around in their catalyst drivers? DUH. Really. Duh. They can re-implement the entire bios in software to fix anything simply because a) they know how the hardware works, b) know what to expect from the bios and if not, do it in software anyway.

It is done.....you can simply hack an existing BIOS to change the clocks/voltages to be permanent in the firmware itself rather than using software to overclock after booting. Some enthusiast PC gamers do this sort of thing. RadeonHD driver? That obsolete open source Linux driver? Stupid? You mean your attitude which is the stupidest thing in this forum? Do you have any proof of your last statement whatsoever? You can't just 'reimplement a BIOS in software'. The BIOS is there to stay in the middle between the GPU and the driver. All communications have to go through this BIOS, else there wouldn't be much point in making a BIOS. Do you really think multibillion dollar companies would have their products running on dysfunctional BIOSs?

[coastiron]

Quote from first link:

I've finally found some time to study Loic Duflot's and Yves-Alexis Perez's recent presentation from the last month on remotely attacking network cards. You can get the slides here.

In short, they're exploiting a buffer overflow in the network card's firmware by sending malicious packets to the card, and then they gain full control over the card's firmware, so they can e.g. issue DMA to/from the host memory, effectively fully controlling the host (that's another example of "Ring -3 rootkit" I would say). The buffer overflow is in some exotic management protocol (that I think is disabled by default, but that's irrelevant) implemented by the NIC's firmware (the NIC has its own RISC processor, and memory, and stack, which they overflow, etc.).

"Remotely Attacking Network Cards (or why we do need VT-d and TXT)" by Joanna Rutkowska

http://theinvisiblethings.blogspot.com/2010/04/remotely-attacking-network-cards-or-why.html

"Can you still trust your network card?" by Lo?c Duflot, Yves-Alexis Perez, Guillaume Valadon, Olivier Levillain.

http://www.ssi.gouv.fr/IMG/pdf/csw-trustnetworkcard.pdf

[oliver]

Why should the community care about someone's overzealous 'philosophy'; that sounds ridiculously absurd. There is nothing subjective about this. If there is no practical use for something, then it is worthless whether you agree with it or not.

Something 'cool' can't really come of this since it's just a simple BIOS that anyone could hack themselves. It's not like untapped potential is hidden in GPU BIOS's. Hardware is released with BIOS's that make full use of all their capabilities as is. Motherboard BIOS's are the only thing that would be worthy of looking into since they handle a much more significant portion of control over hardware in the system (like RAM models, timings, CPU support, etc).

If anybody could just 'hack it themselves' then it would have been long done. Look at your history, RadeonHD driver, where it was proposed to use the registers directly without Atombios. RadeonHD didn't evolve vast enough (much harder) and people didn't really care for it. But that's with a lot of things in life, Usually things that are 'better', be it technically or ethically, get little support. Sad, but true.

It does what firmware is suppose to do, which involves controlling all the components inside the GPU. If there were really such 'broken things' as you say there are, then why don't we see these 'broken things' on Windows? The very fact that BIOS updates are never given for GPUs is a testament that such things don't happen. The only 'broken things' I see on Linux are graphics drivers and proper OpenGL libraries.

Ok that's just the most stupidest answer here. Because they do work around in their catalyst drivers? DUH. Really. Duh. They can re-implement the entire bios in software to fix anything simply because a) they know how the hardware works, b) know what to expect from the bios and if not, do it in software anyway.

[coastiron]

I think that open source firmware for network cards is at this moment more desireable. If firmware in network card have security bug, the whole PC can become fully controlled by attacker.
Quote from first Link:

I've finally found some time to study Loic Duflot's and Yves-Alexis Perez's recent presentation from the last month on remotely attacking network cards. You can get the slides here.

In short, they're exploiting a buffer overflow in the network card's firmware by sending malicious packets to the card, and then they gain full control over the card's firmware, so they can e.g. issue DMA to/from the host memory, effectively fully controlling the host (that's another example of "Ring -3 rootkit" I would say). The buffer overflow is in some exotic management protocol (that I think is disabled by default, but that's irrelevant) implemented by the NIC's firmware (the NIC has its own RISC processor, and memory, and stack, which they overflow, etc.).

http://theinvisiblethings.blogspot.com/2010/04/remotely-attacking-network-cards-or-why.html

http://www.ssi.gouv.fr/IMG/pdf/csw-trustnetworkcard.pdf

[mmstick]

So what does it do? Control fan speeds? Control which clock times are availabe to the drivers? If so, then this is useful. Examples of 3rd party vendors putting broken things on the gpu are seen often enough in this forum here.

It does what firmware is suppose to do, which involves controlling all the components inside the GPU. If there were really such 'broken things' as you say there are, then why don't we see these 'broken things' on Windows? The very fact that BIOS updates are never given for GPUs is a testament that such things don't happen. The only 'broken things' I see on Linux are graphics drivers and proper OpenGL libraries.

[ChrisXY]

So what does it do? Control fan speeds? Control which clock times are availabe to the drivers? If so, then this is useful. Examples of 3rd party vendors putting broken things on the gpu are seen often enough in this forum here.

[przemoli]

Proprietary BIOS mean that only owner can fix it.

PERIOD.

That mean, inability by 3rd party radeon contributors to fix (or even verify) bugs in BIOS.

That may or may not be a big problem here. (And lack of info about supported GPU also mean that we do not know if its solving any issues devs may encounter in new GPU's families)

PS Basic Input Output System is just a name. Hit the dock before you attach "simple" label...

[mmstick]

To scratch an itch or enforce their philosophy. Some random guy who may be doing something cool or not doesn't need a reason that you agree with or not.


And again, something cool might come out of it.

Why should the community care about someone's overzealous 'philosophy'; that sounds ridiculously absurd. There is nothing subjective about this. If there is no practical use for something, then it is worthless whether you agree with it or not.

Something 'cool' can't really come of this since it's just a simple BIOS that anyone could hack themselves. It's not like untapped potential is hidden in GPU BIOS's. Hardware is released with BIOS's that make full use of all their capabilities as is. Motherboard BIOS's are the only thing that would be worthy of looking into since they handle a much more significant portion of control over hardware in the system (like RAM models, timings, CPU support, etc).

[Caledar]

First it cant hurt. 2nd NSA Scandal. could somebody say me if you coulld implement a nsa backdoor into such a firmware and 2nd question, if not, could you do it in a driver like the proprietary nvidia driverblob or the one from amd?

When you run their code (the binary blob) you're running their code. That means if they wanted to, they could practically do anything given it is executed with root permissions which as far as I'm aware it is. I don't know about firmware. Anyone care to elaborate?