“do not panic – your device is not compromised.”
meme(always has been)
There is nothing wrong with your device. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We control the horizontal. We control the vertical.
…We control the treble, and all your bass belongs to us too.
/incredibly ancient joke
If you think the zoomers don’t know about Zero Wing you got another thing coming, buster 😎
I suddenly have the UHF theme song stuck in my head. We gonna make a couch potatah outta you!
Now ask the non-Christians need to do a class action lawsuit lol
Wot?
It is a part of the ASUS Armoury Crate software that is pre-installed on some ASUS PCs.
Always flash new OS if you buy a computer.
That’s in the bios, it’s a pcie device that windows allows to inject root level code into your environement, you have to turn it off and hope nothing ever spoofs that pcie id because that’s a permanent hardware rootkit into your pc like EFI
Can this “feature” be turned off on Windows?
Edit: nvm, I read the article
Which distro do you recommend?
If you want minimal hassle, Mint is the deal.
Depends on your skills and what you want. I’m currently configuring a setup on Void, to learn about login, Wayland & Flatpak. Is that up your alley?
This cracks me up that everyone has a different distro to recommend… But I’ve tried many and OpenSUSE Tumbleweed was the standout that I’ve decided to stick with indefinitely.
Linux Mint or de-snapped Kubuntu.
every submit a help desk ticket to Asus asking wtf is going on
Somebody should create a windows executable to be placed in the WPBT that silently install Linux on first windows boot…
Who green lit this? I really hope that person gets fired immediately.
The lack of any visual link to ASUS isn’t even the biggest problem for me; it’s that ASUS rolls out a program that (presumably) puts itself in autostart by default and just pops up without prompt at all.
Edit: There’s a fucking setting in the BIOS to auto-install ASUS’ bullshit software? And it’s enabled by default… jesus fucking christ
Most computers firmware can store a Windows executable. Microsoft pushed for an addition to the ACPI tables called WPBT. That stores a Windows exectuable in the firmware. It is of course totally used for the intended purpose…
I’m always dismayed but not surprised by how many people don’t know about Windows Platform Binary Table, which has existed since Windows 8. It’s not exactly the type of feature that Microsoft or the board vendors would want to publicize, seeing as it gives them persistent rootkit capabilities on the same level as UEFI rootkits.
Most normal people’s model of Windows security is “if something goes wrong then I wipe the disk and reinstall Windows,” and WPBT completely breaks that model, and has been doing so for 12 years.
Thankfully there are ways to disable it:
There has been for years now. Disabling it is part of my first-time setup for a new board.
My ASUS X470 board doesn’t have it, though; guess it’s a bit too old for that
Stop buying ASUS junk imo
Curious, what do you run? Gigabyte is still meh, ASRock I’ve heard is questionable, MSI is blacklisted garbage for me after a failed bios update and failed flashback restore…
I’ve only heard good things about Aorus (which is basically Gigabyte), though
I helped a friend spec and build their first machine and they got an Aorus (that’s so weird to spell) board but it’s literally just branding. The board is fine but has nothing fancy, and it’s not crazy expensive but it’s sure not cheap either. We have flashed new bios on it twice and the instructions are well over 15 years old and very wrong. It’s a word document and like 4 steps, and they can’t even be bothered to do that much? What set are they leaving on autopilot? (oh, owners, update your bios as there is a recent exploit in the bios due to lack of ssl/tls… as in, there is none when checking for updates which can lead to you installing a malicious bios…)
Just… questionable.
I have a while ago…
Just like the Mozilla Mr. Robot “Easter egg”
The what?
awesome, merry christmas
Why don’t every vendor with an installed app make a similar banner?
It would be so festive, and I bet people would love it, to have 20 or 30 such occurrences every time you need to use your computer during holidays.
It would of course be optimal if each has an animation and a tune, that need to finish before you can escape.
Weird that only Asus had this brilliant idea? It’s so awesome when you are not in control of what happens on your computer.
/sIf you want to take back control, Linux is your best option.
And why stop at Christmas, there’s so many other religious & non-religious festivals through the year… we could have these for every occasion
(also /s)
An unsolicited Christmas card through a letterbox would have at least been less worrying.
I find it difficult to choose a motherboard because they all look shady. aSUS should be criticized for creating a bad app and installing it without consent but I feel like this could have been any other motherboard manufacture.
I got on this on Windows 10 too.
At first I thought I got a virus or something, but then realized this was some ASUS bullshit.
Make no mistake, they will backpedal and apologize, but this was a flex. They want the public to know that their machines are fucking pwnt from top to bottom and they shouldn’t try any funny shit.
And again, don’t have to deal with this corporate nonsense on my Linux machine. Maybe at work just ask IT to switch your machine to Linux. They likely won’t, but if enough people complain and ask, they might actually start thinking about using sane systems
Linux on enterprise user endpoints is an insane proposition for most organizations.
You clearly have no experience managing thousands of endpoints securely.
Windows is malware
