Research Inches Toward Processor-Specific Malware

chicksdaddy writes "The Windows/Office/IE monoculture is disappearing faster than equatorial glaciers — Mac OS X and iOS, Linux and Android ... and whole new application ecosystems to go with each. That's bad news for malware authors and other bad guys, who count on 9.5 out of 10 systems running Windows and Microsoft applications to do their magic. What's the solution? Why, hardware specific hacks, of course! After all, the list of companies making CPUs is far smaller than, say, the list of companies making iPhone applications. Malware targeting one or more of those processors would work regardless of what OS or applications were installed. There's just one problem: its not easy to figure out what kind of CPU a device is running. But researchers at France's Ecole Superiore d'Informatique, Electronique, Automatique (ESIEA) are working on that problem. Threatpost.com reports on a research paper that lays out a strategy for fingerprinting processors by observing subtle differences in the way they perform complex floating point calculations. The method allows them to distinguish broad subsets of processor types by manufacturer, and researchers plan to refine their methods and release a tool that can make specific processor fingerprinting a snap."

Comments

Obligatory intel bashing

[zill]

if( 4195835*3145727/3145727 != 4195835 ){
cpu = "Intel Pentium";
}

Re:Phew i'm good.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, cuz "cat /proc/cpupinfo" is so frickin' hard to do.

Security through obscurity FTW!

Re:Software Warming

[MrEricSir]

You mean the Department of Justice?

Did anyone else read this as

[Snufu]

'...professor specific malware?

I've had to sit through my share of boring lectures, but isn't this carrying things a bit far?

Re:Sparc, MIPS, PowerPC, ... are practically dead

[forkazoo]

You forgot SPARC.

The handful of people who haven't are doing their best.

Re:Ok, maybe this is too simple but

[hairyfeet]

Uhhh...is ANY of that supposed to be English, or is it like a bad FOSS troll meme generator I haven't heard about? If not you might want to get back on your meds dude, as that little rant of yours reads like someone on meth with ADHD.