Re: What is the point of the restore partition?

From	Jim Janney <jjanney@shell.xmission.com>
Newsgroups	comp.sys.mac.system
Subject	Re: What is the point of the restore partition?
Date	2012-08-23 18:28 -0600
Organization	The purple worm hits--More--
Message-ID	<ydn8vd5uo9n.fsf@shell.xmission.com> (permalink)
References	<ydnhartv330.fsf@shell.xmission.com> <slrnk3dafu.f7n.g.kreme@mbp55.local>

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Lewis <g.kreme@gmail.com.dontsendmecopies> writes:

> In message <ydnhartv330.fsf@shell.xmission.com> 
>   Jim Janney <jjanney@shell.xmission.com> wrote:
>> If you've found a virus or root kit on your computer, the restore
>> partition shouldn't be trusted either.
>
> The restore partition is not generally available when you are not booted
> off it, so it should be clean. Also, I have no reason to think that the
> restore partition would load anything but the things it knows to load,
> and those things are likely sandboxed.

It should be clean, unless it isn't.  Admittedly this is mostly
hypothetical for OS X, but the presence of malware means that someone
has found a way around the existing protections.  If I were writing a
root kit, the Recovery partition would be high on my list of targets.

>>If the hard disk failed, the restore partition is probably gone too.
>
> Depends on exactly how/why he disk failed. Not all failures are physical.

People keep telling me that, but I haven't seen any examples.  As long
as you're not running as admin you shouldn't be able to do anything too
bad.

-- 
Jim Janney

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Thread

What is the point of the restore partition? Jim Janney <jjanney@shell.xmission.com> - 2012-08-23 13:08 -0600
  Re: What is the point of the restore partition? Salvatore <sal@yojimbo.hack.invalid> - 2012-08-23 19:15 +0000
  Re: What is the point of the restore partition? "Wayne C. Morris" <wayne.morris@this.is.invalid> - 2012-08-23 15:14 -0500
  Re: What is the point of the restore partition? Howard S Shubs <howard@shubs.net> - 2012-08-23 14:31 -0600
    Re: What is the point of the restore partition? Jim Janney <jjanney@shell.xmission.com> - 2012-08-23 16:01 -0600
  Re: What is the point of the restore partition? Lewis <g.kreme@gmail.com.dontsendmecopies> - 2012-08-23 22:09 +0000
    Re: What is the point of the restore partition? Jim Janney <jjanney@shell.xmission.com> - 2012-08-23 18:28 -0600

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