Rick Altherr

On this episode of On the Metal, we interview Rick Altherr, who has experience working all over the stack. Join us as we discuss impossible bugs, fires in the data center, reverse engineering BMC firmware, BMC vulnerabilities, Cray computers, and Windows NT on MIPS. Yup you heard that right!

Show Notes

You can find Rick on Twitter at https://twitter.com/kc8apf and read his blog at https://www.kc8apf.net/.

Some of the highlights of the show include:

• USBAnywhere: https://eclypsium.com/2019/09/03/usbanywhere-bmc-vulnerability-opens-servers-to-remote-attack/
• Rick's talk at OSFC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrcdHHsfaKQ
• OpenBMC: https://github.com/openbmc/openbmc https://lwn.net/Articles/683320/
• Wireshark: https://www.wireshark.org/ https://github.com/wireshark/wireshark
• Ghidra: https://www.nsa.gov/resources/everyone/ghidra/ https://ghidra-sre.org/ https://github.com/NationalSecurityAgency/ghidra
• ASPEED: https://www.aspeedtech.com/products.php?fPath=20&rId=440
• Nuvoton: https://www.nuvoton.com/products/cloud-computing/ibmc/?__locale=en
• CRAY 1: http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/cray/CRAY-1/2240004C_CRAY-1_Hardware_Reference_Nov77.pdf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray-1
• Deutsches Museum: https://www.deutsches-museum.de/en/exhibitions/communication/computers/
• Seymour Cray: https://www.cray.com/company/history/seymour-cray https://www.britannica.com/biography/Seymour-R-Cray
• CDC 6600: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDC_6600 https://conservancy.umn.edu/handle/11299/104327
• Alpha Station: https://web.archive.org/web/20060701073452/http://h18002.www1.hp.com/alphaserver/workstations.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaStation
• Tru64: https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!original/bit.listserv.esl-l/BovGe3q9yWE/cqlcCYfxmbAJ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tru64_UNIX
• Windows NT: https://web.archive.org/web/20040610122846/http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/1998/winntfs.asp https://web.archive.org/web/20020503172231/http://www.win2000mag.com/Articles/Print.cfm?ArticleID=4494 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT
• Windows NT on Mips: https://gunkies.org/wiki/Installing_Windows_NT_4.0_on_Qemu(MIPS)
• Palo Alto Goodwill: https://goodwillsv.org/store/palo-alto-store/
• SGI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Graphics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SGI_Visual_Workstation
• Cray 1 on ebay: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/24/cray_1_gate_module_ebay/
• root calvin: https://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/04/sln306783/dell-poweredge-what-is-the-default-username-and-password-for-idrac?lang=en https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/2wem6s/is_there_any_story_or_history_behind_rootcalvin/
• Redfish: https://www.dmtf.org/standards/redfish https://redfish.dmtf.org/
• iKVM: https://www.ikvm.net/ http://www.ikvm.net/userguide/intro.html
• IPMI: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/docs/servers/ipmi/ipmi-home.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_Platform_Management_Interface
• I2C: https://i2c.info/
• Non maskable interrupt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-maskable_interrupt
• Read and write heads: https://www.computerhistory.org/storageengine/thin-film-heads-introduced-for-large-disks/ https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/hard-drive-magnetic-storage-hdd,3005-2.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_read-and-write_head
• Fly height: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_height http://maeresearch.ucsd.edu/callafon/publications/2011/UweIEEETonM.pdf
• The legend of the walking drives: http://catb.org/jargon/html/W/walking-drives.html http://msgboard.snopes.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=103;t=000500;p=1
• Open Source Firmware Conference: https://osfc.io/
• Coreboot: https://www.coreboot.org/
• ChromeOS Firmware: https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information-for-chrome-os-devices/custom-firmware
• EDK II: https://github.com/tianocore/edk2
• Open Compute Project: https://www.opencompute.org/
• Width of a Horse's butt: http://www.naute.com/stories/rail.phtml

What is On The Metal?

As a part of starting Oxide Computer Company, Bryan Cantrill and Jess Frazelle decided to also create the podcast that they always wanted. Joined frequently by their boss, Steve Tuck, Bryan and Jess interview incredible guests retelling stories of adventure at the hardware/software interface. It’s unapologetically technical and as Jess says, “the nerdiest podcast on the face of the planet” -- but if you're their kind of nerd, you'll find yourself hanging on every word!