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> The first one gives us our answer: the URL is stored in the registry. It’s actually written by the InstallShield setup.

I... I mean, I get why they did this, rather than building a proper userspace application... but who the fuck thought this would be something that's acceptable to ship to consumers? And what happens in case there are multiple different disk models installed in the same system?

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If I understand it correctly, the URL lets you download a file that maps every Toshiba disk model to a firmware version (???). So having different disk models doesn’t change anything, the program just gets the file, checks which drive needs which version, and then downloads these firmware binaries and installs them.

Or someone social engineers you into clicking on a .reg file which changes these URL's to something malicious that will brick your drives.

They might just as well send any other .reg file that runs a program (e.g. by creating an autoboot entry, COM server, service, ...) that bricks devices.

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