Ah... am I right in thinking the exploit runs when cores other than the first are being started?
Doesn't the boot firmware -- BIOS/UEFI -- have control over whether SMM is started? That's what I was thinking. On Wed, Aug 12, 2026, at 11:57 PM, ron minnich wrote: > you can not disable SMM no matter how early in the boot process you get. > > The memory it runs from is walled off by registers you can not set. > It is enabled by write-once (sticky) bits. > The interrupts vector to firmware. > > Nope, you can't just disable that code at boot time. It's been enabled long > before. > > On Wed, Aug 12, 2026 at 11:01 AM Ethan Azariah <[email protected]> wrote: > >> On Sat, Aug 8, 2026, at 3:49 PM, ron minnich wrote: >> > for all of you who ever suffered with smm, here's another trivial break. >> I >> > like this one a lot. >> > >> > https://github.com/xoreaxeaxeax/smiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii >> > >> > "It turns out that you can break SMM — the secure, ultra privileged >> > execution environment running invisibly in the background of every x86 >> CPU >> > — with nothing more than an obscenely long-running machine instruction." >> > >> > That was easy. Usually it took more effort. >> >> Entertaining, but if you can inject code into that point of the boot >> process, can't you just disable the code which enables SMM? ------------------------------------------ 9fans: 9fans Permalink: https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/T496d301e510c8cf1-Md16aa8493f6e8b2f392a09e5 Delivery options: https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/subscription
