On Sun, Aug 12, 2018, 1:44 PM James Knott via talk <
talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
On 08/12/2018 01:26 PM, Russell Reiter via talk wrote:
> Some wag deemed it a "ring 4" exploit.
>
Many years ago, I was a computer tech, working on a variety of systems,
including the VAX 11/780 and Data General Eclipse. Both of those had a
writable control store and the VAX even loaded it's microcode from a
floppy at boot. One ot the things I had to do, when repairing Eclipse
computers was work my way through the microcode, using a very large
listing and a logic probe, along with the microstep switch on the front
panel. The Eclipse used 4 AMD 4 bit slice processors and, IIRC, over
100 bits wide ROM to contain the instruction set. With the WCS, I
expect it would be fairly easy to insert malware.
Thats an interesting paradigm shift.
Searching through the physical setup using logic tools old school, vs new school; searching through patent records just to be able to find the hardware.