Dell shipping laptop with rogue self-signed root CA

Re:Dell shipping laptop with rogue self-signed root CA by _lce0 on Monday November 23, 2015 @01:02PM (#10616023)

What about installing an intermediate linux system?

  1. start with window pre-installed
  2. install any linux distro, fully overwriting the OEM
  3. re-install windows, from microsoft

I'd say just stop at step 2 ;) but I can understand that not everybody can do this (eg: work computer) but want a clean OS.

will this method work to remove such bloatware?

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Re:Dell shipping laptop with rogue self-signed root CA by morcheeba on Monday November 23, 2015 @01:09PM (#10616080)

This won't work because the firmware will write a file to your hard drive with the bloatware. It's scary that firmware will modify my filesystem - lots of damage could happen here.

Also, instead of step 2, it would make more sense to boot linux on a usb stick and use dd to erase the hard drive -- this is more complete than installing another OS... but still useless if the firmware is working against you.

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Re:Dell shipping laptop with rogue self-signed root CA by lmz on Monday November 23, 2015 @02:27PM (#10616662)

In this case Windows will write to your filesystem, not the firmware. Of course there is nothing stopping a firmware from writing to the disk before it loads any OS, but that is true with any OS not just Windows.

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Re:Dell shipping laptop with rogue self-signed root CA by mikeash on Monday November 23, 2015 @01:03PM (#10616033)

It won't work unless you manage to flash the UEFI firmware.

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