this post was submitted on 24 Dec 2024
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[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 hours ago

The manager who approved this need to be fired. Programs need to ask permission to the user before installing, especially when they're not device drivers.

This is literal malware and there's also a chance that it might be exploited (example: a mitm Attack exchanges the file that armory crate is downloading)

This kind of Easter egg is not funny at all, developers must avoid undocumented time bombs. I still remember that day 15 years ago when I turned on my Wii and it said that the system files were corrupted. After hours of reverting a full nand backup via bootmii (and losing 2 years of game saves) it turned out that it was a funny April's fool by crediar, which put a fake system corruption message when you run his program on April 1st. Problem is that his program was a loader for the system menu so it was unavoidable if you didn't know that.

Like me, there must be someone paranoid that saw that black bar on the screen, saw a weird Christmas.exe running on their system, and starting wiping or restoring old images to "clean" that.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

the wreath has a memory leak

modern app design and its consequences

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 hours ago

More like old app design. It's much harder (but of course fully doable) to have a memory leak in modern languages.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 17 hours ago

WDYM "malware like"? It is malware.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

Another reason to not buy any Asus stuff.

[–] [email protected] 53 points 1 day ago (2 children)

"do not panic – your device is not compromised."

meme(always has been)

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 day ago

if someone not you installing crap you dont want isn't compromised then i dont what is

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 day ago (2 children)

There is nothing wrong with your device. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We control the horizontal. We control the vertical.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 day ago (1 children)

...We control the treble, and all your bass belongs to us too.

/incredibly ancient joke

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

Now ask the non-Christians need to do a class action lawsuit lol

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 hours ago
[–] [email protected] 362 points 1 day ago (38 children)

When you turn on your PC and notice that there’s a huge Christmas banner on your desktop, do not panic – your device is not compromised.

Hah, well a vendor just pushed unapproved executable to the device and ran it without consent. Under any definition or other context it's definitely compromised.

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 day ago

Somebody should create a windows executable to be placed in the WPBT that silently install Linux on first windows boot....

[–] [email protected] 368 points 1 day ago (20 children)

If it's unwanted, disruptive, and (allegedly) impacts performance, that's not "malware-like". It's malware.

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[–] [email protected] 132 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (16 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 66 points 1 day ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

Can this "feature" be turned off on Windows?

Edit: nvm, I read the article

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 day ago (12 children)

That's in the bios, it's a pcie device that windows allows to inject root level code into your environement

What. The. Fuck. Are they the only one to install their crap so deep?

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 day ago (2 children)

This will be executed even on new fresh installation oob.

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[–] [email protected] 120 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (12 children)

That won’t get rid of it unless you also manually go into the BIOS and disable the install ASUS Armoury Crate setting as explained in the article.

If you don’t do this it will automatically reinstall even on a fresh install of Windows. Some of these bloatware programs will even install without an internet connection! This absolutely ludicrously stupid feature is called WPBT and is used by lots of manufacturers. Luckily it doesn’t work on Linux (at least for now…).

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[–] [email protected] 39 points 1 day ago

every submit a help desk ticket to Asus asking wtf is going on

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