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Comment by hiciu | Hacker News Reader

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WPBT is explicitly not supported by Linux kernel. On windows side it is handled by (I may be mistaken, haven't verified that) `wpbbin.exe` binary.

https://docs.kernel.org/arm64/acpi_object_usage.html says:

> Microsoft only table, will not be supported.

(I know, it's for arm64, but there seems to be no other docs)

But, you can use your Linux kernel to see what's inside your motherboard. Check /sys/firmware/acpi/tables/WPBT, if you have one.

source: https://michlstechblog.info/blog/windows-identify-a-wpbt-bin...

Sure, but if it's arbitrarily throwing things into the ESP and having them be run on boot, they presumably could do the same thing with Linux. Maybe secure boot would stop it, otherwise I don't see why it couldn't add another initrd to your boot config.

It isn't touching your disk at all. It's just providing an executable in a specific ACPI table that Windows explicitly supports running code from for the purpose of installing OEM-provided software.

I was wrong on what exactly it was doing, but GRUB seems to have some level of support for doing the same thing. https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub/html_node/acpi...

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