ReactOS, the open source project aiming to recreate Windows NT, has reached a new milestone: booting on ARM64. The ReactOS team cautioned that the build was "still in an experimental state," while encouraging users to try it. Screenshots show the project running on ARM64 (via QEMU) and on a Raspberry Pi 5.
UEFI and IOMMU are designed to enforce a security foundation and prevent peripherals from performing unauthorized memory accesses, effectively ensuring that DMA-capable devices can manipulate or inspect system memory before the operating system is loaded. The vulnerability, discovered by Nick Peterson and Mohamed Al-Sharifi of Riot Games in certain UEFI implementations, has to do with a discrepancy in the DMA protection status. While the firmware indicates that DMA protection is active, it fails to configure and enable the IOMMU during the critical boot phase.
