zlacker

[return to "Supermicro server motherboards can be infected with unremovable malware"]
1. SoftTa+K5b[view] [source] 2025-09-28 17:22:44
>>zdw+(OP)
"If a potential attacker already has administrative access to the BMC..."

Then you've already lost.

The BMC needs to be ideally on a physically isolated network, or at least a separate one that has no route from the outside nor on the machine itself.

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2. Aurorn+S7b[view] [source] 2025-09-28 17:37:06
>>SoftTa+K5b
That’s a cop-out. It should be the case that even administrator access should not be abusable to implant permanent backdoors.

Anything that makes privileges escalation exploits more damaging is a real problem. I’m getting tired of how these are being dismissed as if admin access should mean that you can ignore any security issues. There are things that even admin accounts should not be able to change at the hardware level, or if they can they must be reversible in the future by another user with admin access.

> The BMC needs to be ideally on a physically isolated network, or at least a separate one that has no route from the outside nor on the machine itself.

This is good practice but it shouldn’t excuse poor security at the hardware level.

Supermicro motherboards also commonly default to having a feature that bonds the BMC network interface to one of the main NICs if you don’t plug a cable into the BMC interface. It’s common for people to be surprised that their BMC is exposed on their main network because they didn’t plug in a cable on the BMC NIC port at all.

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3. userbi+Dvb[view] [source] 2025-09-28 20:31:33
>>Aurorn+S7b
It should be the case that even administrator access should not be abusable

If administrator access is equivalent to ownership, then I strongly disagree.

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4. adastr+wHb[view] [source] 2025-09-28 21:56:05
>>userbi+Dvb
Even as an owner, you should not be able to arbitrarily restrict the rights of future owners.
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5. ohyout+ELb[view] [source] 2025-09-28 22:35:22
>>adastr+wHb
No more hole sawing my old hard drives for me, lest I restrict rights of future owners to use the drives as storage devices.
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6. Dangit+7Sb[view] [source] 2025-09-28 23:50:51
>>ohyout+ELb
Well they'd still have the right, just not the ability (this is actually a distinction US courts have made regarding arbitration clauses and legal recourse).
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