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:Hardware Virus

[xgr3gx]

Is that the same virus that would cause the hard drive to emit an electromagnetic wave to erase your nearby floppy disks, and overpower the laser in the CDROM to make it melt your CDs?

Apple Update not an attack

[thtrgremlin]

Turns out there wasn't a phishing attack, but an Apple Update that didn't go as planned. Apple sent an update that caused every mac to flash their router with a AirPort/AppleTalk/IPX update. Everything went as planned, except for the few customers that had Mac computers on non-Airport based networks. Rumor has it Apple has regarded the issue as low priority, but will provide a patch for everyone that buys OSX10.6 and until then their official statement so far is "STFU, why weren't you using an Airport?", noting that use of non-Apple routing equipment can void your warranty, and that they have no legal obligation to resolve the issue with the few affected hackers.