2012-01-23 12:55, Peter Åstrand wrote:
On Sat, 21 Jan 2012, Jim Klimov wrote:
Sun terminals by design have no software on-board, only
the small (400kb) firmware, so they have minimal possible
What does these 400 KiB contain if not software? Only data? :-) Firmware
is software...
Moot point ;)
Firmware is a special-purpose software, as opposed to generic
expandable-purpose easily-replaceable software, perhaps? ;)
This firmware is enough to boot, and maintain Keyboard, Mouse,
Video, Audio, USB and Networking IO, and some fun with smartcards,
etc. The firmware is signed and a separate chip checks that only
unmodified released Sun firmware (or certain other OEMs' on their
branded DTUs only) can boot and work.
There is no X11 server on the terminal, no samba client, no local
firefox, etc. - all of which are active networkers and potential
security holes. Well-known holes. Crackable by "script-kiddies".
And no local storage to keep the uploaded rootkits ;)
Besides, just statistically, if there is a security problem every
N lines of code, there's less code in 400kb than in hundreds MB
of a linux/wince image - thus less probable errors ;)
I guess that's the difference.
//Jim
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