David WE Roberts wrote:
"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
Tim Streater wrote:
In article ,
Jules Richardson wrote:

Yes, I don't think there's much BIOS interaction once a modern OS
has booted, but the point is that BIOS code *is* run at system
startup ...

Only if you have a machine with a BIOS.

I am not sure how you bootstrap an OS without a modicum of BIOS or at
least a ROM based boot loader.

Unless the whole machine runs out of ROM..


Just wandering idly by after a holiday break.
Just wondered (reading all this stuff) if something was inserted into
RAM at boot time, ran memory resident, and kept an area of SWAP for
any data storage, how detectable would it be in the log files?
Or even if it used raw access to the disc to use any spare,
unformatted areas or suchlike?
Certainly wouldn't show up on any checksum of the filestore.

You'd still have to get it inserted into ram at boot time
without leaving any traces of getting that onto the system.