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List:       flashrom
Subject:    [flashrom] Re: (Re)Unsuccessful Read with FlashRom
From:       Mike Banon <mikebdp2 () gmail ! com>
Date:       2021-04-07 16:09:44
Message-ID: CAK7947npi+jbQUwsnRBrmLe7sSUBeeoXrEoUk=5GEPHQgd-h0A () mail ! gmail ! com
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If you suspect that your BIOS is infected (BadBIOS?), I could only
suggest doing a hardware ISP flashing with one of the
flashrom-supported programmers (i.e. green PCB ch341a) and a test clip
like SOIC8 (to be able to attach to a chip without any soldering)
while the board is turned off of course. This should be the most
reliable. Before flashing a new known good BIOS image that you might
obtain i.e. by extracting from a manufacturer's update utility, please
dump the previous contents with a programmer: so that you'll be able
to recover from it just in case, and maybe even look through it for
any hard evidence of a BIOS virus to share it with the community (if
that's really true, could be quite interesting for research purposes).
Also I copy this message to a flashrom mailing list, in case someone
else could also advise you.

On Wed, Apr 7, 2021 at 2:05 PM Rahngue NGARIERA <youetonam@gmail.com> wrote:
> > 
> > Hi Mike. I didn't mention it in my previous email, but I used also flashrom 0.9.6 \
> > on Ubuntu 14.4 Which failed on both Probe and Read with "Hardware sequencing was \
> > requested but the flash descriptor is not valid. Aborting". While using version \
> > 0.9.4 (on DOS) I did both Probe and Read. As You said, the 2 chips FlashRom 0.9.4 \
> > found (AT25DF081A and AT26DF081A) are the same and one chip. And checking on the \
> > main board I did see that chip. It's AT26DF081A. I did try to read on FlashRom \
> > 0.9.4 (on DOS) using the -c parameter with AT26DF081A first (as in -c AT26DF081A) \
> > but that failed. Then just to see, I tried to read with -c AT25DF081A ( since \
> > 0.9.4 was seeing two chips). But it also failed. I'm sending you again the Probe \
> > log and the Read logs using FlashRom 0.9.4 : READ1.TXT (AT25DF081A)
> 
> and  READ2.TXT (AT26DF081A).
> 
> FlashRom 0.9.6 (Ubuntu14.4) and FlashRom 1.2 (on DOS) both failed whether reading \
> or probing even with -c AT26DF081A ( -c AT25DF081A) with the same message at the \
> end saying that flash descriptor is invalid. This Dell system I want to read from, \
> I think, has its bios infected. When It comes to bios, I prefer to operate from \
> DOS: I think it's safer and maybe help avoid any action from the virus. Please \
> Mike, what do I do for FlashRom to successfully read this chip? I need  to confirm \
> if this bios chip is infected. Thanks for your help,
> Etonam.



-- 
Best regards, Mike Banon
Open Source Community Manager of 3mdeb - https://3mdeb.com/
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