Tag: Toms Hardware

Toms Hardware: Win10 unsupported disk layout UEFI error howto

~ hucktech ~ Leave a comment

Tom’s Hardware – an example of a computer review site that never shows CHIPSEC results 😦 — has a new article on how to fix a common UEFI/Windows problem:

How To Fix Windows 10 Unsupported Disk Layout UEFI Error
by Seth Colaner November 17, 2017 at 1:30 PM

A common problem that Windows users have encountered when trying to update Windows 10 is the “Unsupported Disk Layout for UEFI Firmware” error. This error basically means that the partition structure of your hard drive is not supported by the version of Windows 10 that you want to upgrade to. This error can be resolved by creating a Microsoft Reserved Partition (MSR), which is used on Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI)/GUID Partition Table (GPT) disks. Without getting too technical, we will outline the steps to fix this error when attempting to update.[…]

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/how-to-fix-windows-10-unsupported-disk-layout-uefi-error,35960.html

PS: Tom, please start showing CHIPSEC (and FWTS) results in your reviews, less on what colors the cases come in, and more on what security the HW/FW fails to offer. Thanks!

Security updates in Android N

~ hucktech ~ Leave a comment

Lucian Armasu has a story in Toms Hardware about Android N security changes, summarizing a presentation from Adrian Ludwig of Android at the recent Google I/O event. The story has a link to the Google I/O video, as well. Outline of Lucian’s story:

Hardware-Backed Keystore (Now Mandatory)
Fingerprint And Smart Lock Authentication
Secure Networking
Storage Encryption
Strictly Enforced Verified Boot
Checking Device Health
Sandboxing
Other System Restrictions & Improvements

“[…] Ludwig said that a major security feature of Android these days is the hardware-backed ‘keystore’, which is available in the vast majority of Android devices thanks to various implementations of ARM’s TrustZone. Although TrustZone has been mainly implemented by chip makers and OEMs to enable stricter DRM protection, Google started making it available to application developers in the past few years. […]”

“[…] If in Android M the phone would warn the user only that the boot was modified by unknown code, in version N the device will not boot if the boot process has been maliciously modified. Google also introduced bit-level error correction in the verified boot feature, which can erase changes that would, for instance, keep a device rooted after it’s been rooted. […]”

Full story:
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/google-android-n-security-improvements,31846.html