alt Hacker NewsThis is very interesting, but I'm a little lost. UART is serial. Are they trying to get a serial terminal set up with some chip on this motherboard? Wat does it let them do?
Replies
ethan_smith • today at 2:18 AM
Accessing the BMC UART gives you console access to the baseboard management controller's operating system (typically Linux-based), allowing for firmware analysis, debugging, and potentially bypassing security restrictions that aren't accessible through the normal management interface.
"X11SSH" is a Supermicro motherboard [1] with a (fairly common) Aspeed BMC implementing IPMI. (It has nothing to do with X11 or SSH - the name is an unfortunate coincidence.) The UART that is being accessed here is a debug UART for the BMC, which also runs Linux.
[1]: https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/motherboard/x11ssh-f