16 Jul
1999
16 Jul
'99
1:07 p.m.
On Wed, 7 Jul 1999 William Donzelli wrote:
Another thing found in service manuals are the tricks
that allow
technicians and engineers to crack passwords and use backdoors. Imagine
the fun a company would have trying to patch a PR disaster because some
high school kid keeps fooling around with spanning trees and access lists
on switches and routers, with techniques available in the back of a manual.
I guess that only applies to a relatively small proportion of all products out
there (that is, networking-related).
There is a lot of sensitive information in these
service manuals that can
really hurt a company if it falls into the wrong hands. The easiest
solution, and probably the best as well, is to restrict the manuals.
...
No. Companies simply do not care about "non-official" service agents
anymore because there are not that many of them to worry about, and the
companies can always clobber these "non-officials" on replacement parts
costs, technical support, and the continuation of warranties.
One thing I would like, is for companies to make (internal) service manuals &
possibly other info too, available for old & obsolete products which they do
not support any more.
After five years say, the company may not even be supporting the product at all
(i.e. not providing a repair service), so I can't see how releasing the info
could harm them.
Though the proportion of people interested in this info would be small, I'm
sure some good publicity spin could be given to doing this. And it needn't be
expensive at all; just converting the documentation to PDF format (or scanning
it if only paper copies are available) and putting it on a web page would be
enough.
Does anyone know of any companies that have done something like this?
-- Mark
16 Jul
16 Jul
1:03 p.m.
I guess that only applies to a relatively small
proportion of all products out
there (that is, networking-related).
Yes, a service manual for a terminal is not going to have these. Bigger
stuff, networking gear, etc. ("professional" things), very well could
have "secrets". Pentiums, too (remember when those "hidden registers"
were discovered?
One thing I would like, is for companies to make
(internal) service manuals &
possibly other info too, available for old & obsolete products which they do
not support any more.
After five years say, the company may not even be supporting the product at all
(i.e. not providing a repair service), so I can't see how releasing the info
could harm them.
For products five years old (except networking/telecom and mainframe
equipment), it would not hurt them much - except if something deep in the
hearts of the equipment holds some company secret to high performance.
Though the proportion of people interested in this
info would be small, I'm
sure some good publicity spin could be given to doing this. And it needn't be
expensive at all; just converting the documentation to PDF format (or scanning
it if only paper copies are available) and putting it on a web page would be
enough.
It may not be worth any companies time. Look at corporate museums - it
has been proven that they are more liabilities than assets.
Does anyone know of any companies that have done
something like this?
DEC has done a pretty good job, letting loose with information on their
older systems (PDP-12 and such). While some of us applaud the release, I
doubt it effected sales one bit for their real products.
William Donzelli
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