[pchelpers] News:New BIOS Virus Withstands HDD Wipes

3:21 PM - March 27, 2009 by Marcus Yam
Computer viruses are nasty things. But the nasty just got nastier.

In many worst case scenarios, a hard drive wipe is the final solution to
ridding a system of an infection. But the absolute worst case scenario
is if a virus attacks the BIOS, making detection and cleaning an
incredible challenge.

Viruses that target the BIOS aren’t new, but often they are specific to
a type of hardware. Researchers have now demonstrated a new type of
attack that could install a rootkit on the BIOS of common systems,
making it very lethal and effective.

Anibal L. Sacco and Alfredo A. Ortego of Core Security Technologies
released a presentation detailing the exploit of this “persistent BIOS
infection.”
 Through the use of a 100-line piece of code written in
Python, a rootkit could be flashed into the BIOS and be run completely
independent of the operating system.

More here:
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/bios-virus-rootkit-security-backdoor,7400.html#xtor=RSS-181
-- 
John Durham
Site http://modecideas.com
Server hosted on Ubuntu 4.10
Good advice is like good paint. It only works when applied.



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