Move away from default password

[Stewart Smith]

Adriana Kobylak <anoo at linux.ibm.com> writes:
>>> 1. Unique password per BMC.
>>> In this approach, there is a way to change the factory default 
>>> password.  Example flow: assemble the BMC, test it, factory reset, 
>>> generate unique password (such as `pwgen`), then use a new function 
>>> “save factory default settings” which would save the current 
>>> setting into a new “factory settings” flash partition. After that, 
>>> a factory reset would reset to the factory installed password, not to 
>>> the setting in the source code.
>
> How would this new "factory settings" flash partition be protected 
> against being modified by an unauthorized or malicious user?

My guess would be it'd be protected the same way that the default
password is today: not at all. If an attacker can write to flash, the
only way to reset the box is to dediprog the BMC flash chip.

-- 
Stewart Smith
OPAL Architect, IBM.