Newsletter Archives

• Designed for maintenance?

  Posted on August 26, 2024 at 02:44 CDT by Ben Myers • Comment in the Forums

  BEN’S WORKSHOP

  

  By Ben Myers

  Continued advances in computer technology have had a positive effect on the gear we use — faster, less power-hungry, lighter in weight, smaller and more secure than a decade ago. But maintaining and repairing modern computers present new challenges.

  The processor chips regularly produced today have up to 10 billion transistors incorporating many and varied computing cores, on-board cache memory, and a graphics subsystem and other circuitry to talk to devices attached to the computer — all etched on silicon wafers at a spacing less than 10 nanometers, or 0.0000003937 inches. Chipsets supporting the processors and circuit traces on motherboards are smaller and closer together, allowing for smaller motherboards, too. Memory and storage have grown by multiples of two with every processor generation. Computers such as the older seven-slot Gigabyte board inside an older large tower, once state of the art in 2010, have become the province of high-end gaming and specialized use.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.35.0, 2024-08-26).

  Ben's Workshop Apple, BIOS, HiRens, Newsletters, Repairability, Repairs, UEFI

• Finding the Achilles’ heel of TPM

  Posted on July 8, 2024 at 02:45 CDT by Ben Myers • Comment in the Forums

  

  ISSUE 21.28 • 2024-07-08

  BEN’S WORKSHOP

  

  By Ben Myers

  Eclypsium, a security firm, recently discovered a vulnerability in the system-board firmware supporting the Trusted Platform Mode (TPM) for a wide range of Intel processors.

  As described by an Eclypsium blog entry, it is “a high impact vulnerability (CVE-2024-0762 with a reported CVSS of 7.5) in the Phoenix SecureCore UEFI firmware that runs on multiple families of Intel Core desktop and mobile processors.”

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.28.0, 2024-07-08).
  This story also appears in our public Newsletter.

  Ben's Workshop AMI, BIOS, CVE-2024-0762, Firmware Update, InsydeH2O, Intel, Intel Lake, Newsletters, Phoenix, UEFI

• Recommended BitLocker patch KB 3133977 causes some ASUS motherboards to freeze

  Posted on May 4, 2016 at 13:19 CDT by woody • Comment in the Forums

  Looks like ASUS set a bit in BIOS that engages Secure Boot – when they shouldn’t have. Combine that with KB 3133977, and you get a bricked system.

  InfoWorld Woody on Windows

  Windows Patches/Security ASUS, KB 3133977, Secure Boot, UEFI

• Windows 8: Not as unified as we thought?

  Posted on January 17, 2012 at 23:46 CST by woody • Comment in the Forums

  The kerfuffle over Windows 8 Secure Boot provokes two important observations.

  InfoWorld Tech Watch.

  Windows News Secure Boot, UEFI, Windows 8