How safe it is to give my vBIOS to someone to edit it?

[Frandesktop]

As you know I have issues with my R9 290 on older boards (Intel DH61WW / Gigabyte GA-H61M-D2-B3)

I found a forum of BIOS modding and the moderator there was nice enough to tell me he can try to edit the R9 290 vBIOS to be able to boot with Legacy BIOSes.

Is there information in the vBIOS that can be harmful? Can some malware be coded there?

 

(I need to dump the vBIOS of the R9 290 from a PC that already works with the R9 290)

 

I can send you link to the forum and the thread if you want

 

[WhitetailAni]

If I wanted, I could probably modify a keyboard to lock up a computer.

[Frandesktop]

Well I don't know because he is the one editing the file. All I do is dumping it to send him and mod it. I can ask him how he mods it and then do a dif, on both files

[Letgomyleghoe]

16 minutes ago, Frandesktop said:

I found a forum of BIOS modding and the moderator there was nice enough to tell me he can try to edit the R9 290 vBIOS to be able to boot with Legacy BIOSes.

 

what forum, If it's a mod on a good forum, I personally would trust them.

 

what is the exact card model, and/or does it have a bios switch?

 

5 minutes ago, ragnarok0273 said:

If I wanted, I could probably modify a keyboard to lock up a computer.

honestly doubt this, as you need some sort of storage media, then you would need to get the user to launch some sort of program with admin perms. also this is a physical example, not code.

[Sandro Linux]

Letting a stranger edit your vBIOS doesn't sound like a good idea

[Frandesktop]

  

58 minutes ago, Benji said:

By the last line, I meant that you generally need to take risks in such things as long as it isn't official. I would wager that it is too complex for you and there might be more steps needed (I don't know about GPU vBIOS modifications anyway, so I can't tell you how it's being done). So if I were you, I'd probably trust them. It's a forum for "nerds", so if they were doing some bullshit with the files and bricked devices, they would've been called out already.

Not official but if I check the difference between files and see that the only difference is a minor difference regarding what he said he'll do, which is only removing the UEFI only module to support legacy then I might give it a try, he does not change anything else deeper, hopefully?

58 minutes ago, Letgomyleghoe said:

what forum, If it's a mod on a good forum, I personally would trust them.

 

what is the exact card model, and/or does it have a bios switch?

 

honestly doubt this, as you need some sort of storage media, then you would need to get the user to launch some sort of program with admin perms. also this is a physical example, not code.

 

Sapphire Radeon R9 290 reference edition, the forum is called Win-Raid Forum

52 minutes ago, Sandro Linux said:

Letting a stranger edit your vBIOS doesn't sound like a good idea

True, that's why I will look at the BIOS files after he edits it and do a dif-merge to see what's different. The GPU itself has a BIOS switch so even if 1 bricks I have the other.. it's OK no?

[Frandesktop]

Update: I gave him my vBIOS and he uploaded it edited in a .7z file and Windows Defender immeditaly popped up removing it: You think it's really a virus or it's just detected it because it's a weird 7z/rom file?

 Or it's the website?