Being the professional hack that I am, (No I did not say hacker, kids.) I feel obliged to share this delectable bite of security information with y'all as well.
You've all been rooted already. See here: http://www.forbes.com/2008/09/04/pentagon-defense-contractors-biz-wash-cz_atg_0904beltway.html http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4253628.html http://mike-tomlinson.com/2008/11/19/and-now-the-manchurian-microchip/ I'm being a bit tounge-in-cheek about this, but there's a difference between a general threat versus an actual one. And the problem now is that the actual threat hasn't materialized. Asteroids hitting the earth. A black hole created from LHC swallows the earth. Pluto getting angry at earth for being demoted, and crashing into earth: http://dearjanesample.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/friends-of-pluto.jpg (Hey, don't blame me, blame the friends of pluto) Those are all general threats, nothing specific. All you can do in this world is focus on the specific ones, and minimize the threats of the general ones. One countermeasure might be to just reflash the bios with Linux. Something which I'm all for. http://www.coreboot.org/Welcome_to_coreboot --R On Mon, 2009-03-23 at 22:39 -0400, zach tilse wrote: > I figured I'd give everyone a heads up on some virus news that could > soon affect everyone, literally everyone from BIOS level and it's > being worked on as we speak. Some of you may have already read > articles about it and it stems from a weakness dating back to 386's > but here's a link to it. It will affect any OS and reflashing and/or > reformatting cannot stop it. The only good news is the rootkit only > works by gaining root to install this snippet of code. > > http://threatpost.com/blogs/researchers-unveil-persistent-bios-attack-methods > > They showed it at CanSecWest working on a Windows PC, OpenBSD, and a > PC running VMWare player! > > Even though it works cross-platforms, I can see a lot of Windows users > getting hit by this simply because of an insecure system. > > > -Zach Tilse- > > > ______________________________________________________________________ > Internet Explorer 8 – Now Available. Faster, safer, easier. Download > FREE now! > _______________________________________________ > Fwlug mailing list > [email protected] > http://fortwaynelug.org/mailman/listinfo/fwlug_fortwaynelug.org _______________________________________________ Fwlug mailing list [email protected] http://fortwaynelug.org/mailman/listinfo/fwlug_fortwaynelug.org
