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Rootkits Head for Your BIOS

Posted by Zonk on from the get-me-off-of-the-internet-please dept.

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).

3 of 287 comments (clear)

  1. Solution by CastrTroy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    They should just make the motherboard have a physical switch on it that stops your bios from getting written to. For the number of times i've had to flash my bios, it'd be a small price to pay to have to open my computer , just to have the piece of mind that some virus wasn't overwriting my bios. If it was a software setting, then there would be a way around it, but if there was a physical switch, that disconnected the write lines, then it would probably be pretty hard for a hacker to get around that.

    --

    Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
  2. Hoglund? by IamTheRealMike · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Though this does not and should not reflect upon his findings or the articles, it should be noted that Hoglund is not only a rootkit "expert" but also a blackhat who enjoys developing cheats for World of Warcraft. When the Warden came out and put a stop to this little business his Wow!Sharp software got nailed and (presumably) he began losing money.

    In other words, anything this guy says or does is in my mind suspect .... he writes rootkits and other forms of "attacking software", so for all we know this asshole is getting ready to post example code to the net. It wouldn't be the first time.

  3. What will be interesting by HangingChad · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Is when security companies start checking for BIOS rootkits is if they find something there already staring back at them.

    I'm wondering at the possibility this has been done before and not detected because no one looks there?

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    That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage