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Rootkits Head for Your BIOS
Artem Tashkinov wrote to mention a SecurityFocus article which discusses a disturbing new threat to computer security: Rootkits that target a computer's BIOS. From the article: "One rootkit expert at the conference predicted that the technology will become a fundamental part of rootkits in the near future. 'It is going to be about one month before malware comes out to take advantage of this,' said Greg Hoglund, a rootkit expert and CEO of reverse engineering firm HBGary. 'This is so easy to do. You have widely available tools, free compilers for the ACPI language, and high-level languages to write the code in.'" Update: 01/27 14:28 GMT by Z : John Heasman wrote with a link to the slide presentation on this topic given at the Black Hat Conference (pdf).
What about EFI?
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it worked for floppy disk.. I want a little hardware switch that cuts the write lines @ the bios
The problem is, think of Joe Sixpack updating his own...
Wait. Never mind. Joe Sixpack almost would never flashes a BIOS, because he still calls the tower "my hard drive."
Also, the BIOS-flashing process should have a user confirmation screen on the next boot. I don't only want to stop potential malicious writes to my BIOS, but to know when they happen.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
There are two contradicting principles here.
Many home users want that second kind of functionality. Partly because they don't want to bother with the details, partly because they are mentally challenged. They really like to be able to update the Computer's BIOS as easy as visiting a web site or running any kind of program. Unfortunately, this is what they get. And so do we.
No, on the inside would stop it from being tripped by accident, or by users who have no idea what it does and decide to start playing with it. Also, all updates to the BIOS should just be stored on a secondary chip, and have to be confirmed when the user boots up the next time before it is copied to the actual bios. And there should be a third read only chip containing the original bios, which could somehow be loaded in the case of an emergency/mistake. BIOS chips can't really be that expensive, so putting extra security measures in place to not get your system hosed are important.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Way way back in the summer of 1994 we use to have viruses that would write themselves to the boot sector of our hard drives and some of them would even overwrite our Bios. I wouldn't expect you to know about it, since it happened so long ago but, those were tough times. Some PC manufacturers would even put antivirus detection software in their Bios to detect and prevent these Bios viruses. Sometimes it worked. Other times your system was hosed!
Grandad Admin.
In all seriousness, I am surprised at the lack of malicious viruses today. In yesteryears, viruses wiped out data, wiped out file allocation tables, wiped out Bioses, wiped out PCs. In comparison, todays "malware" seems rather tame or even benign.
I can't wait until one of these is widespread AND badly written. Once several thousand computers stop booting and are potential ruined (umm... you need a new motherboard... this is not covered under warranty). God help whoever wrote and distributed it. He will hang.
In other words, at no point is the actual title of any windows transmitted.
Let's review this situation:
It amazes me that such a transparent piece of bullshittery could have got as much press as it did, given that it's clearly a case of him trying to spite Blizzard after they shut down the money-making business of Wow!Sharp (it only went open source after they felt it had become useless). Ever since this sordid incident, Hoglund has been a dirty name to me and many others familiar with it, and I don't trust him at all.
Like I said, it wouldn't surprise me a bit if he released code showing how to hack the BIOS, just like he teaches people how to write rootkits despite them having (as far as I'm aware) no legitimate uses.
And what, exactly, would a rootkit or virus want with the BIOS?
A very insightful question—and one with a scary answer. Currently, if I have a machine that's infected with a rootkit/virus/other malware, I can boot Knoppix or other favourite live CD of choice, and be sure that the malware isn't running (and thus can't prevent me detecting/removing it, log my keystrokes, wipe my HD, or any other things I'd rather it didn't do). Once malware starts overwriting the BIOS, I can't even be sure of that: as soon as I apply power to the machine, it's already compromised...
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Actually, I think it's more because no-one has bothered yet. Users who are incompatible with moving jumpers around are likely also incompatible with BIOS updates.
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
Hoglund makes money off letting people cheat in WoW. This damages the enjoyability of the game for many people, making him in my mind what is commonly called an "asshat".
... what it did/does do is hash various bits of data including open window titles then send the hashes to Blizzard for checking against a database of known bad signatures (ie cheating apps).
You may have a reasonable point. This use is in contravention of the EULA. However, they run the Warden on ALL computers because they cannot know which ones belong to cheaters ahead of time. As I will show, this seriously compromises the security and privacy of anyone running WoW.
Furthermore, I for one adamantly refuse to play any such game on principle. I will not submit to this sort of digital strip search for any reason. There are plenty of games which do not require this sort of draconian intrusion onto one's computer.
The Warden doesn't "spy" on you, that's a ridiculous assertion
You say "doesn't." That verb is in the present tense. The Warden is code downloaded from WoW whose content can be changed at any time. ANY TIME. Please let that sink in. That makes it a trojan with a remotely downloaded payload. Although they can change that, of course. Granted, they do disclose that there may be some vague code doing something in the EULA. Kinda sorta. Assuming it hasn't changed to contradict the EULA since the EULA was written. And we all know how the EULA defense worked for Sony. The only difference here is that the code is required to play the game at all and that we don't actually know exactly what information it sends out (although, as I'll show below, we can get a pretty good idea thanks to a side channel attack).
As for "only sends back hashes" you do NOT know that. If you'd even bothered to read the whole description, you'd see that it sends back encrypted packets. So yes, it does root through all open windows, all processes in memory, etc. and it does hash them, but you have NO way of knowing what's in those packets. They can send the contents of any section of memory out with the hashes. They can throw the hashes away and send only content. Hell, someone on the very forum linked to described several megabytes of bandwidth getting used up by this over a few seconds. That's pretty clearly inconsistant with sending only the hashed information back.
Worse, even with the "only hashes" line of reasoning, it checked all the email addresses of his friends, etc. If they can ban you merely for *communicating* with the wrong folks, dammit, that's a problem.
it does not send personally identifiable information back to Blizzard
The information sent back is personally identifiable in that it's linked to your WoW account, which is linked to a credit card, which had better be linked back to the account holder. How do you think they ban people if they cannot identify them? Do you not think that they'll not know which account to cancel if a given credit card is maxed?
Please explain to me how you could possibly think otherwise. You cannot add that together and say it's "not personally identifiable" without utterly distorting the meaning of that phrase. Even if you try to justify that by saing that mom & dad are the ones actually paying for your account, it's pretty trivial to trace it back to you, in the end, and it's certainly identifiable.
Ever since this sordid incident, Hoglund has been a dirty name to me and many others familiar with it, and I don't trust him at all.
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Like I said, it wouldn't surprise me a bit if he released code showing how to hack the BIOS, just like he teaches people how to write rootkits despite them having (as far as I'm aware) no legitimate uses.
That's a completely illogical line of reasoning. It's kinda like saying "I don't like you, so I'll assume that you'll do something criminal." Moreover, giving out information on ho