4 ms·
I don't know if the NSA are the best in the world, but they're probably among the best-funded in the world. Stuxnet is close to a work of art; the degree of ef
by ForHackernews 6y ago
I don't know if the NSA are the best in the world, but they're probably among the best-funded in the world.
Stuxnet is close to a work of art; the degree of effort involved in hiding self-reinstalling malware inside hard-drive firmware is staggering.[0] Anyone who's ever tried to write Linux drivers for undocumented hardware can appreciate how insane it is that they managed to do it for a dozen different hard drive manufacturers.
[0] https://www.theverge.com/2015/2/16/8048243/nsa-hard-drive-firmware-virus-stuxnet https://www.theverge.com/2015/2/16/8048243/nsa-hard-drive-fi...
- secfirstmd 6y agoLet's not forget. Stuxnet is 15ish years old also.
- moyix 6y agoKeep in mind that a motivated academic research team was able to write a hard drive firmware implant on their own as well: https://www.impeachdonaldtrump.net/Implementation.and.Implications.of.a.Stealth.Hard-Drive.Backdoor.pdf https://www.impeachdonaldtrump.net/Implementation.and.Implic... But yes, making it work for a bunch of manufacturers would be a lot of additional work (though easier if you can obtain the data sheets for the embedded microcontroller, which is probably doable if you're the NSA). Side note: don't blame me for the URL, it was just the first place I found that had a PDF of the paper.