New 'Phlashing' Attack Sabotages Hardware

yahoi writes "A new type of denial-of-service attack, called permanent denial-of-service (PDOS), damages a system so badly that it requires replacement or reinstallation of hardware. A researcher has discovered how to abuse firmware update mechanisms with what he calls 'phlashing' — a type of remote PDOS attack."

Comments

Re:Read-only switch

[Anonymous Coward]

more than nothing

Hardly a new phenomenon

[g051051]

This isn't exactly a new problem...in the early days, you could fry a monitor by setting the video card to absurd refresh rates, and you could destroy hard disks by issuing bogus stepping commands to the heads and slamming them into the stops.

Re:Pharphetched naming

[Curien]

Credit where credit's due:
http://www.physics.uwo.ca/~harwood/humor13.txt

Re:Pharphetched naming

[flosofl]

Dude, at least acknowledge the original you borrowed this from (maybe Mark Twain, most likely M.J. Yilz). http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/twain.htm

Re:Sometimes I wonder...

[trongey]

Sometimes I wonder the mindset that even goes into creating something like this. ... I can understand if mobster types are trying to do a virtual bank robbery,... Close. It's called extortion. You do this to one of a site's machines. Then you send the demand for payment with a threat to do it to the rest of their machines. It's been happening to gambling and porn sites for years since law enforcement agencies don't usually get in a hurry to apprehend people who attack those sites. They have been using DDoS, so this would just be a bigger hammer.