Intel needs to update alot of eeproms in netcards - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Tooms
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 08, 2013, 08:49:04 am
content: Seems Intel has a issue in the eeprom in many of the netcardsQuotehttp://isc.sans.edu/diary/Intel+Network+Card+%2882574L%29+Packet+of+Death/15109

author: mikeselectricstuff
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 08, 2013, 09:30:35 am
content: I'm a bit puzzled as to how the eeprom can be involved - it usually just stores the MAC address.Maybe there are some debug modes or something that were accidentally left enabled.

author: amyk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 08, 2013, 11:47:14 am
content: There's lots of other configuration info in there for the other features, such as "manageability" which is marketing-speak for being able to remotely control a machinewhile it is offby sending special packets through the ethernet controller. Those could cause many issues if not configured properly.

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 08, 2013, 01:35:36 pm
content: Quote from: mikeselectricstuff on February 08, 2013, 09:30:35 amThere are a lot of NICs with additional features to offload the CPU (mostly for servers). And don't forget WOL (Wake On LAN).

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 08, 2013, 01:40:57 pm
content: Brief summary:- Intel 82574L effected- any packet with 0x32 at offset 0x47f crashs the NIC (for example: ping -p 32 -s 1110 x.x.x.x)- might be related to ASPM (Active State Power Management)

author: rr100
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 13, 2013, 07:18:17 pm
content: Even the dumbest network card still needs to do "stuff", starting with recognizing its own MAC (of course you can outsource this to a driver in the OS and run it on the main CPU, some kind of "winmodem network card" but it would be extremely wasteful). Of course they do many other things even for low-end motherboards like checksum offload, WOL, etc.Better cards have some really nifty features like layer 3 firewalls or lights-out management.

author: Wuerstchenhund
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 13, 2013, 07:25:34 pm
content: Quote from: Tooms on February 08, 2013, 08:49:04 amNope, they don't:http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/Intel-Packet-of-Death-not-Intel-s-problem-1801537.htmlIn short: it's a single manufacturer who uses intel NICs on its products and who screwed up when flashing their EEPROMs.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 14, 2013, 04:57:19 am
content: If they had a robust CRC or other image integrity check, that problem would be caught during testing rather than continue on to cause a real nightmare.

author: updatelee
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: February 14, 2013, 05:37:44 am
content: really doesnt surprise me, Ive done some work on various dvb cards in linux and the eeprom often stores the usb/pci vendor/subvendor id's. You can read or write the eeprom, I accidentally overwrote the vendor/subvendor id in the eeprom and sure enough it stuck, Linux would no longer load the driver because I had wrote 0000 for vendor/subvendor, a simple rewrite and I was good to go. So if you can brick a dvb card over I2C Im not surprised you can brick an ethernet card over SPI.UDL

author: rr100
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 03, 2013, 01:31:42 pm
content: Pre-2000 I bought one of the expensive-ish Creative sound cards and linux managed to brick 3 of them (as I was replacing them). The owner (which I knew very well) of the small shop that sold them to me wasn't happy at all...