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1. Hardware that batches DMA and replays it: a full device reset when the driver first initializes (before enabling bus mastering) should fix this, right?

2. Drivers that depend on this: which ones? Are they hard to fix?

Obligatory: I'm a kernel developer so I may be overly optimistic, but isn't this a security problem, at least in one sense? (That is, a malicious device may try to use bus mastering to attack a running kernel.)




If someone has the ability to get a malicious device into your system, likely they have the ability to screw you over in more reliable ways too.


Yes, physical access is game-over.

However, what if the malicious device is actually a compromised but popular vendor who ships malicious firmware? That wouldn't be a stretch.

Resetting devices and fixing drivers isn't a huge win, but it's still an improvement. Like ASLR doesn't actively prevent buffer overflows - it just makes attacks more difficult.




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