Dell Ships Infected Motherboards

An anonymous reader writes "Computer maker Dell is warning that some of its server motherboards have been delivered to customers carrying an unwanted extra: computer malware. It could be confirmation that the 'hardware trojans' long posited by some security experts are indeed a real threat."

Comments

Wow, Dell...

[gorzek]

That's some great QA you've got going on over there.

Re:Wow, Dell...

[hedwards]

Dude, I'm getting a GENERIC VIAGRA!

Re:Wow, Dell...

[gorzek]

Just because you have a third party manufacture your hardware doesn't mean you shouldn't do your own QA. After all, it's your reputation on the line, not that of the nameless sweatshop contractor.

So, yeah, this is thoroughly Dell's fault for not caring about their brand or reputation.

Re:Wow, Dell...

[Richard_at_work]

Unfortunately you cannot QA 100% of everything you ship without significantly affecting costs - as the article states, Dell is saying that this affects a small number of motherboards sent out in a particular manner, so its quite possible that this slipped through a random item QA testing net out into the open without there being any real QA procedure issue.

Re:Wow, Dell...

[gorzek]

But these are servers, not consumer desktops. I guess it was naive of me to think there would be better quality checks on server hardware. Double dumbass on me.

Re:Wow, Dell...

[ElectricTurtle]

The issue probably was the procedure. Is it really a coincidence that these boards missed QA? I doubt it. If even one of the boards were caught before distribution, wouldn't there have been an investigation that would have stopped the rest? These boards were probably deliberately injected at intervals designed to pass through known gaps in the QA intervals, assuming the QA people weren't somehow complicit themselves.

Dude, you're getting...

[Farmer Tim]

pwned.

why spend millions when you can spend billions?

[roman_mir]

The Pentagon is spending millions on research designed to ensure it can trust the microchips in critical systems, especially those made outside the US.

- I think the only true way to be sure is to manufacture the microchips yourself, of-course this costs much more than millions.

This comes down to the old question raised by Ken Thompson of Trusting Trust.

Re:why spend millions when you can spend billions?

[roman_mir]

Ken Thompson would show you how you'd fail in this anyway. You'd THINK you flashed the chips, but there would be some other code somewhere in the chip that would contain a Trojan. Unless you are in the loop 100% of the time and nobody can inject any modifications into any manufacturing processes, you can't be certain that nothing at all was modified.

Re:why spend millions when you can spend billions?

[WED Fan]

How about bringing the fabs back to the U.S.? Too many chip manufacturers have gone overseas.

It's not a hardware trojan

[lseltzer]

It's firmware, meaning software in a ROM. It's only slightly unconventional.

And they say it's only on motherboards sent out as replacements. Interesting, you would think this would make it fairly easy to identify the source.

Re:It's not a hardware trojan

[Lumpy]

Incorrect. It's firmware, meaning it's software in a FLASH or EEPROM on rare occasions. That means it can be re-written by applications that know how to talk to it. Writing to a FLASH is not hard or a secret, in fact I wrote a self destruct years ago to screw with a kid that kept trying to break into our dial up server. It was called "Router Passwords.exe" and it simply tried to write FF FF FF to the beginning of the Bios flash chip for several different common motherboards.

it worked, the kid never tried to connect again after he downloaded that bomb.

If it was a ROM, my trick would not work as you can not update or write to ROM's.

Re:It's not a hardware trojan

[Rogerborg]

There's no schooling like the old schooling. Say, could you hear him screaming down his acoustic coupler?

Bad Article

[Co0Ps]

From TFA:

This malware code has been detected on the embedded server management firmware.

Firmware != Hardware It would have been impressive if it was a real hardware virus though e.g. some malicious chip that opens a backdoor on the network cards and allows remote code execution.

Re:Bad Article

[hedwards]

That's bullshit and hardly relevant. Firmware is installed on a chip in the hardware. The significance is that even if you were to reinstall the OS, you'd still have the code pop up every time you try to use it. Hardware in this case indicates that it doesn't reside on the HDD or in some other removable portion of the computer. While you can change motherboards, that's a serious enough operation that you're essentially ending up with a different computer once finished.

Re:Bad Article

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Arguably the IPMI is one step easier than just the motheboard firmware. Those suckers are basically little embedded computers, typically running linux or vxworks, with their own processor and everything. They happen to be physically coupled to the motherboards of larger devices; but, architecturally, they are basically the same as any of the "little bitty plastic box" style embedded network appliances.

Given the fact that embedded appliances frequently have security made of pure shit, and servers are rather high value targets, the only real surprise is that they aren't targeted more often. Especially, if you are super lucky, the IPMI card will be connected to the oh-so-special-and-physically-separate-for-security "management network", which is where all the juicy; but often vulnerable, management interfaces live. Nice place to have an attack platform silently embedded...

Re:Bad Article

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you could update the firmware.
I'm with GP, It's embedded software, but it is still software. It would have been really impressive if it was actual hardware malware.

Some might call this

[flakblas]

a feature.

What did you expect?

[Chas]

Basically the entire computer's assembled in a sweatshop by barely literate people who are being paid jack-shit to assemble a "rich-boy toy" for some perceived fat cat in the US who sleeps on piles of money.

How the hell would they know if someone decided to pull a dick move like this?
And for what they're being *COUGH*paid*COUGH*, why the hell would they even care?

Re:What did you expect?

[Taco Cowboy]

Basically the entire computer's assembled in a sweatshop by barely literate people who are being paid jack-shit to assemble a "rich-boy toy" for some perceived fat cat in the US who sleeps on piles of money.

I hope you take back the "barely literate people" part because it is untrue.

To say that is to think too highly of your own self.

Re:What did you expect?

[Elbowgeek]

You do raise a good point. *We* the consumer have demanded the cheap prices of the hardware we buy, thus squeezing the profit margins of companies like Dell. Thus Dell is forced to outsource their firmware development and manufacture to China with too little oversight, leaving greater opportunity for exploitation by those with malicious intent.

Re:What did you expect?

[Taco Cowboy]

Thus Dell is forced to outsource their firmware development and manufacture to China with too little oversight, leaving greater opportunity for exploitation by those with malicious intent.

Does it follow that if the servers are manufactured in the U. S. of A. there will be no people "with malicious intent" and thus the servers would surely be guaranteed safe?

Re:What did you expect?

[vlm]

Basically the entire computer's assembled in a sweatshop by barely literate people who are being paid jack-shit to assemble a "rich-boy toy" for some perceived fat cat in the US who sleeps on piles of money.

People talk about Detroit autoworkers exactly the same way. Doesn't mean much, really.

Re:What did you expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes because barely literate people working in sweat shops have the technical expertise to plant a virus in hardware.

Re:What did you expect?

[Bill_the_Engineer]

*We* the consumer have demanded the cheap prices of the hardware we buy, thus squeezing the profit margins of companies like Dell.

Half truth. Dell did not add any value to their products and decided to compete on price. In order to lower their prices and retain their profit margins they outsourced their assembly to countries with lower labor costs. Dell was not forced to lower their price, they choose to compete on price alone.

*We* the consumer did not demand cheap prices, instead we purchased whatever gave us the better value. Which for some means the cheapest machine that runs stock Windows 7 for home, but for others features and/or better components may be deciding factor (eq. Apple, Alienware, Voodoo PC, Sony, etc.)

Re:What did you expect?

[Low Ranked Craig]

Does it follow that if the servers are manufactured in the U. S. of A. there will be no people "with malicious intent" and thus the servers would surely be guaranteed safe?

No, it just means that instead of costing $2,000 it would cost $6,000, and availability would sometimes be spotty due to the unionized workers striking, although it's probably a little more likely that the bad-ass perpetrators might be arrested.

This is one of the things that irritates me about a lot of people; They will complain about the outsourcing of jobs and demand the lowest price all in one breath. Here's a clue for those clueless people - demanding the lowest price in a global economy ensures that those products will be manufactured where the cost of labor and material is lowest, and that ain't America or Western Europe.

The next time a WalMart shopper complains about job outsourcing, offer to show them the cause of the problem and hand them a mirror.

For my own part I do try to at least shop at smaller local business when I can, the local Ace instead of Lowe's for example, but it's almost impossible to avoid cheap imported products, and it's even more disheartening when the cheap $15 chinese tool is better than the $30 made in USA tool...

Re:What did you expect?

[somersault]

So it's our fault for being prudent with our spending? I guess we should all pay over the odds for our electronics to make sure that all these international businesses aren't feeling the pinch too much in their profit margins! Let's buy from someone like Apple who we know are making a hefty profit on their products! Oh wait, Apple do their manufacturing in China too.. hmm.

Re:What did you expect?

[mwvdlee]

Here's a clue for those clueless people - demanding the lowest price in a global economy ensures that those products will be manufactured where the cost of labor and material is lowest, and that ain't America or Western Europe

So if those people would be willing to pay more, the products would be manufactured in more expensive countries instead of the companies continuing cheap labor manufacturing and simply making a bigger profit?

Re:What did you expect?

[evildarkdeathclicheo]

Is there even an option to purchase a "high quality" motherboard, or any computer components for that matter? Cheap mass-produced goods abound in many types of products, however there are usually options. I can buy a cheap Korean car or guitar, but I might choose not to, paying a premium for an item designed and assembled in Germany, the US, or even Japan. I realize that it's very expensive to produce electronics in the US, and environmental laws make it highly unlikely to happen here, but it seems there would be a strong niche market for "computerphile" goods given how damned cheap the mass produced junk is these days. I'd rather pay a premium for a high-quality home-produced video card based on last years model, then pay a premium for the "latest and greatest" mass produced piece of Chinese junk. Am I alone here?

Re:What did you expect?

[twoallbeefpatties]

People talk about Detroit autoworkers exactly the same way. Doesn't mean much, really.

Actually, we say that Detroit autoworkers were overpaid and got way too many benefits for their unskilled labor due to inflexible, corrupt unions - sort of the opposite thing to what we're saying about offshored labor. But who's counting?

Re:What did you expect?

[Tom]

No we haven't, and no they weren't forced.

Dell decided to produce cheaper, in order to compete on price. They could have decided to compete on, say, quality, service, security, or any other area. They didn't.

The "we the customer" meme should be shot on sight. It's from the 50s when we had something resembling free markets. Quick, how many major computer hardware manufacturers are there? So what are your choices, really? What are the choices of the general public, who know very little about computers or what goes into them?

There's no such thing as customer decision. If at all, there is customer choice, among the products that are offered. The people who decide what kinds of products are available to be chosen from aren't the customers, it's some dudes in the marketing and product management departments.

Don't make it too easy for them to avoid the blame. Nobody forced them to outsource to China. They decided to do it, because it would improve their bottom line. There are some - not many, but they exist - companies who made a different choice. Just because everyone else does it does not mean you have to do it - it just gives a manager with little interest beyond his yearly bonus a very easy excuse.

Re:What did you expect?

[localman57]

If you consider being able to recognize a McDonalds sign as a sign for McDonalds as your criterion for literacy, then yes, I'd say we've achieved 99% literacy.

Re:What did you expect?

[Aceticon]

Dell would "outsource their firmware development and manufacture to China with too little oversight" even if the consumer had not "demanded the cheap prices of the hardware we buy" - it's just that in that case they would pocket the difference.

Look at a typical brand-intensive (where a large percentage of the face price is for brand, not actual product) consumer electronics company like Apple - they have their products manufactured in China just like everybody else.

No, the problem with consumers is not that they want stuff cheap, the problem with consumers is that they accept shitty products and do not seriously penalise a brand when it turns out they do not have proper quality control in place.

Re:What did you expect?

[joebagodonuts]

Dell isn't forced to do anything - they played a huge part in creating the demand for the cheap prices for hardware.

Re:What did you expect?

[kimvette]

Dell was not forced to lower their price, they choose to compete on price alone.

That is true of some of their desktops and low-end laptops - they're cheap in terms of both price and build quality, and the failure rate is abysmal.

When you move up to the Precision line, everything changes. I bought a Precision M6400 notebook for the build quality, full keyboard, performance, and parts availability. It uses a desktop chipset, has a Quadro video card, more ports than pretty much any other notebook (plus ExpressCard and Cardbus/PCMCIA), and the best screen I could find (glosst 1080p with an RGB-LED backlight). I know the notebook will still be running three years from now, and if I need a part in five years, there's a 99% chance Dell will be able to provide the part I need. (and yeah, calling a mobile workstation a "notebook" is a stretch, I know - this thing weighs in at almost 10 lbs)

Their servers - they're not bad at all, but proprietary wherever Dell can possibly make them proprietary, and even rebadged RAID cards which you would think are fairly standard, have firmware which makes them proprietary (their Perc line). I like their PowerVaults - the first time I set one up in a Windows cluster it was a royal pain in the ass though, because the jumper and DIP switch setting documentation was completely wrong, technical support had it just as backwards, so I was on my own. The chassis build quality was great though - almost up to anything from Chenbro or SuperMicro. If you price out any of the enterprise-quality servers, Dell is certainly not competing on price alone - in fact they are more costly than others. They compete based on their support contracts and their next-day parts or service delivery.

They engage in predatory business practices though. If you are a Dell reseller and are quoting a number of servers or large number of desktops for a client, Dell will attempt an end-around and sell directly to your client.

Also, the form factors they use are proprietary, locking you into Dell when it comes to upgrades, and - oops, you can't upgrade the motherboard in that server, guess you will have to buy a whole new server!

Downmarket they compete on price. Upmarket they compete on service contracts and vendor lock-in.

Re:What did you expect?

[Low Ranked Craig]

People can choose to take all things into consideration when making a purchase, or not. Look at the current "green" movement. People are buying things labeled as green even thought they cost more, don't offer any additional benefit to the user, in many cases probably work worse, and in reality don't really help the environment all that much.

Re:What did you expect?

[Waffle Iron]

The next time a WalMart shopper complains about job outsourcing, offer to show them the cause of the problem and hand them a mirror.

The problem is that the "global free market" is a multi-player version of the Prisoner's Dilemma game. It's been proven that in absence of communication between the players, the rational choice in this game is to always "defect". In this case, it means buying cheap imported crap at Wal Mart. If you don't defect, most others continue to do so, and you just end up being a sucker.

Complaining about individuals' choices is going to accomplish nothing, because they're all making the most rational individual decisions. The only way to change the situation is to include the external costs of cheap offshore production into the retail price, which alters the individual's most rational choice. The most obvious way to do that is slap a tariff on the goods.

Re:What did you expect?

[Skuld-Chan]

That's a myth - the biggest reason companies outsource manufacturing to 3rd world countries is a greater return on profit. Instead of making 150 dollars per machine you might make 20 or 30.

Good example of this - up until very recently Dell's corporate desktops (Optiplex line - in fact I'm typing this on a 745 that has a "Assembled in the USA" sticker on it) were made right here in the USA, and didn't cost all that much more than Vostro machines which are made in China. These are rock solid machines (haven't had to replace a single major component on any one of the 200 or so I'm responsible for).

My brother used to work for an importer of Chinese goods (pens/no name tv's [I see them at fry's all the time]/toys) you wouldn't believe the markup some of these goods have. Pens that sell for a dollar for instance they were buying for as little as 5 cents. 5 cents - think about how far they traveled, and how much effort it takes to make a ballpoint pen than you can make 95 cents profit off of. A lot of these 5 cent pens were toys on the side as well (light up, or have an etch-a-sketch attachment on the end - stuff like that) that sold for 2-3 dollars.

Re:What did you expect?

[Pharmboy]

I can't speak for China, but I know that Moldova (the poorest country in Europe) is the cheapest place to build in Europe yet a large portion of the population has some college or a full degree, and an overall literacy rate that rivals the US. Perhaps due in part to being a former SSR. Poverty is not caused only by a lack of education.

Re:What did you expect?

[lymond01]

God. And all this time I thought that was an upside down double-u.

Re:What did you expect?

[fritish]

to assemble a "rich-boy toy"

I read this as "rich boy-toy". The rest of the thread got really confusing after that..

Re:What did you expect?

[Mister Whirly]

Actually, I would consider being able to read as the criteria for "literacy". What does McDonalds have to do with literacy rates? Nice strawman though - we aren't talking about obesity, nutrition, or anything food-related in this conversation.

Re:What did you expect?

[Bengie]

what about power supplies and LED lit LCDs?

I have a namebrand $80 psu that's only ~8 years old and it had a power factor of ~0.8. My new PSU has a power factor of .99+

My old PSU was ~75% efficient max, my new one is ~85-89% depending on load

LED backlit LCD's consume about 1/2 the power of a florescent lit one, not to mention the lack of Mercury.

My ati 4850 consumes ~60watts idle, the ATI 5770 I plan on getting soon will consume about 20watts idle.

For servers, the biggest power draw is going to be HD/CPU/PSU, but a "green" version of any of those can add up really fast.

Re:What did you expect?

[innocent_white_lamb]

Good example of this - ... I'm typing this on a 745 that has a "Assembled in the USA" sticker on it)
 
I don't know if your example is all that good.
 
You do realize that there is a huge difference between "Assembled in the USA" and "Made in the USA", right?

Re:What did you expect?

[blackraven14250]

Just because they don't know how to put the words together coherently into sentences following proper grammatical structures doesn't mean they can't write. It means they're not going to be writing research papers.

Also, if you think the criteria for India and China's literacy rates is different or inherently superior to the US, you'd be sorely mistaken.

Re:What did you expect?

[clarkkent09]

>i>The most obvious way to do that is slap a tariff on the goods.

The most obvious and the most wrong. We can never be better off as a nation by increasing the overall cost of the goods we purchase. Workers in certain industries can be better off because tariffs harm their more efficient foreign competition, but those workers are better off only at the expense of a) consumers who are forced to pay more for goods and b) other workers who are losing jobs because their employer's costs have increased. Classic example has been the steel tariffs: great for the steel industry workers but the unseen victims are the workers in every industry that now has to pay more for steel => charge more for products => lose customers and eventually cut down on jobs and pay for its workers. There are no serious economists advocating protectionism any more, that battle has been won by free trade proponents many decades ago. There are only occasional left wing loonies who think you can magically increase prosperity by legislation - really a form of broken window fallacy (in this case breaking the window = artificially imposing extra costs on production by tariffs)

Re:What did you expect?

[swb]

How many choices did you have in a rather competitive market (at the time) like cars?

Domestically? At least five: Hudson (which became AMC), Studebaker, General Motors (which we'll count as one, despite the fact that in the 1950s there was a lot more distinction between division products), Ford and Chrysler.

And then there were niche players, like Checker whose vehicles were primarily for the livery market but went on to sell normal end-user vehicles.

What do we have now? Three, sort of -- GM has closed its Olds and Pontiac divisions, making for fewer choices, although realistically the marquees of GM have had little distinction since the 1970s, Chrysler is owned by Fiat, and Ford isn't what it used to be.

Import-wise we have more choices now, but to be fair to 1950s markets, Europe and Japan were in recovery and the vehicles produced at that time were more attuned to local market conditions (less expensive, smaller, etc) than American consumer demand (larger, more powerful, etc).

Re:What did you expect?

[Waffle Iron]

Are you aware that rational choice / homo economicus is one of the basic assumptions economists use to build their models and theories because it makes it mathematically tractable?

Yes, and somehow free-market infatuated economists come to the exact opposite conclusion that I pointed out. They claim that the free market finds the optimal solutions when it obviously can't.

What's worse, they assume that the results of adding up a bunch of individual decisions can be modeled with simple linear mathematics and can be used to fine tune policy. Then when their models are driven into a nonlinear or chaotic zone and spectacularly blow up every few years, they just shrug it off and keep doing the same thing. But incredibly, people keep buying the snake oil peddled by these cargo cult "scientists".

Re:What did you expect?

[Quirkz]

A lack of money, mostly.

Re:What did you expect?

[Pharmboy]

Several things can cause a country to be poor: Lack of natural minerals or water, political instability, inability to invest in infrastructure due to a number of reasons (political, laws that make investment a poor decision), etc.), no access to the ocean for transport (like Moldova) or simple location making it difficult to trade. War. Having a single source of income for the country (banana republics, for example.) Having neighbors that don't trade with you can be a problem (North Korea). Also having a system that has no middle class (Mexico) can lead to widespread poverty, even though Mexico has more natural resources than the USA, although literacy in Mexico isn't near other nations.

Being a part of the soviet union for years and having these issues (like Moldova) is certainly an issue. Moldova is between Ukraine and Romania, and is an excellent place to grow crops, but their whole economy is too dependent on agriculture, and they have to import machinery. They do have a pretty good (and old) wine industry, but it is small. Moldova mainly needs a few more decades to heal from being a SSR for so many years.

So yes, education is certainly a factor in poverty, but education doesn't "cure" poverty and is often not the primary reason for it.

To paraphrase Ghostbusters

[MonsterTrimble]

I have not studied computer science, firmware trojans nor antivirus. Could someone explain to me:
1) How do firmware trojans work?
2) Are they OS independent?
3) What information can they send and/or damage can they do to a system?

Re:To paraphrase Ghostbusters

[bannable]

Why is this modded flamebait? It seems like a legitimate question for someone unfamiliar with why this is interesting.

Re:To paraphrase Ghostbusters

[Anonymous Coward]

1) More or less the same as any other trojan, but they're much nastier.
2) Yes, very much so.
3) Depends on what piece of firmware it is specifically, if say, the BIOS was what was infected then pretty much whatever the hell they want/want to do. Raw dumps of the HDD in the PC(or even just particular files depending on how advanced the trojan is) and an inside track for exploiting the entire network that the machine happens to be connected to, while remaining mostly invisible to anyone but a good/dedicated sysadmin.

Re:To paraphrase Ghostbusters

[snadrus]

Think embedded keylogger that sends results somewhere online for starters.
Although it could be as advanced as a router that's been taken over and allow full remote access to the intranet the PC has. That way all the complex theft software is external.
And ofcourse it could monitor activity & brick the motherboard if someone was trying to detect it.

Re:Made in China

[hedwards]

It's worse than that. Even those of us that do realize it are kind of stuck. The model that saw out sourcing to China as the solution to pretty much everything more or less obliterated the midrange category for many items. It's really hard to find things these days that are midranged in price and quality. I don't generally need to go top of the line on things, but thanks to the outsourcing there isn't a whole lot of choice, I can cheap out which usually isn't a good idea or buy high end.

The free market really doesn't handle the situation where there's a nascent market for something which investors are ignoring.

Re:Wow.

[grahamlee]

It's also possible that the malware was actually dropped from a *nix or Windows system that wasn't itself infected, but where the user wanted to drag Dell through the muck. Doesn't need to be any of these Advanced Persistent Threats you keep reading about, just a terminated employee on his last day. I doubt that embedded hardware is connected to the internet while it's being assembled, so it seems unlikely that they got a chance infection - someone had to subvert their production process. That's most likely to be an insider.

"You can't blame Dell"? WTF!?!

[Anonymous Coward]

How can you make such a claim?

Outsourcing to the cheapest bidder absolves them of responsibility?

I guess OJ really was innocent, and the lady that burned her own crotch by spilling coffee on herself really did deserve the million bucks from McDonalds..
No wonder the world is in shambles..

systematic attack?

[rebmemeR]

many parts are sourced from china. would it not be distinctly possible for that government to experiment with such trojans? most likely the evidence trail would be hard to track.

I like where this is going.

[boneclinkz]

**This call may be monitored for quality assurance purposes.**

Customer: Hi, my computer won't POST.

Steve (Samir): Okay, sir, first we must try a few things. Is the machine currently plugged in?

**3 hours later**

Steve: Sir, the problem appears to be a faulty motherboard. Unfortunately your system is out of warranty. Luckily, while the system was operational, our integrated key-logger was able to pull your shipping address and credit card numbers. We have billed you for a replacement system and it should be there in 3-5 business days. Someone will need to sign for it, perhaps your oldest daughter. Justine is turning into a fine looking young-lady, by the way.

Blown WAY out of proportion

[kaizendojo]

A few of their SERVICE stock for a single motherboard showed signs of malware code on the embedded server management firmware. Dell reacted quickly and appropriately. You can read the forum posting that started this all here: http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/servers/f/956/t/19339458.aspx

Of course this is disturbing, but it's quite a leap to say a 'hardware trojan' is 'shipping with Dell Servers'. Once again, a good example why you should never blindly trust "anonymous posters' on Slashdot... RTFA yourself.

Re:Blown WAY out of proportion

[sjames]

It's not THAT big a leap. It can intercept system functions in the background leaving NO evidence at all on the actual server. It doesn't matter what OS you install or how much AV software you run. You can ever check the system BIOS if you're extra paranoid and still not even touch the spyware hidden in the system.

It may not be literally in the hardware but it's considerably deeper embedded into the server than any virus reported up to this has ever been.

SW/HW Malware

[Killer Instinct]

Its not bad enough they ship with windows ?

Re:SW/HW Malware

[steelfood]

It's probably a step up from Windows 7.

Inexcusable

[mlts]

There are some issues where malware winds up in places, and that is something beyond the vendor's control. However, having the motherboard's BIOS infected is just plain not excusable. How can people have any guarantee of security if a maker's QA process allows this stuff to happen? Even if they offshore it to another contractor, the buck stops at the company whose name is on the machine. How can we be sure that replacing the management software and/or a BIOS reflash will take care of the problem?

At least there are plenty of vendors to choose from in the x86 server market. IBM has some very good machines. HP always has had quality offerings. Oracle sells x86 and SPARC hardware, Cisco sells x86 servers that are decent. Even Apple has a top quality 1U server that can both work in a server room as well as a musician's rack.

Dell: The Ryanair of Servers

[jimicus]

Let's face it, Dell is the Ryanair (or, if you're American, the Southwest Airlines) of server vendors. Anyone who's ordered a server from them knows the drill only too well.

You want a cheap server? No problem, sir.

Oh, you wanted hard disks with your server? They're an optional extra, sir. They cost more.

You wanted more than 512MB RAM? That'll be extra, sir.

You wanted a processor which wasn't discontinued 18 months ago yet somehow we've managed to find a whole warehouse full of the buggers? That'll be extra, Sir.

You want a 3 year warranty or are you happy with our standard 30 minute warranty? Three year warranty's extra, Sir.

You want to actually speak to a technician during the course of the three years? Or are you happy being routed to the office cheese plant? The technician's extra, Sir.

Now we know there's another question they'll ask.

You want a motherboard that hasn't been pre-infected with firmware level trojans? That'll be extra, Sir.

Just to clear things

[tuomoks]

Did anyone read the problem before replying, of course not - this is /. after all - so, from Dell ( just the important points ):

3. The W32.Spybot worm was discovered in flash storage on the motherboard during Dell testing. The malware does not reside in the firmware.
4. All industry-standard antivirus programs on the market today have the ability to identify and prevent the code from infecting the customer’s operating system.
5. Systems running non-Microsoft Windows operating systems cannot be affected.

Doesn't seem very serious, of course it's Windows only so, of course, you are running antivirus AND, of course, after motherboard swap don't put it to production without testing - which would catch it?

Anyway, still wondering even without antivirus - home come that people let their systems communicate over network with unauthorized traffic? Just going back 20+ years designing network systems, some even Windows, my systems never allowed any unauthorized traffic in or out - this of course sometimes needed even building your own comm. stacks, traps, hooks, proxies, whatever but also guaranteed that all traffic was legitimate! Saves a lot headache - of course all attempts were logged, alerted and, in case of outbound, the sources were isolated - automatically! So - even Windows can be built that way (with pain!), just wondering why some don't do that?