3 ms·

But buy a new machine?

• bena 6y ago
  It's a sticky wicket. A compromised machine is just that, compromised. Someone recently posted a story about an exploit wherein the compiler itself was compromised to compromise a particular set of programs when compiling those programs. Including the compiler itself. So closing this particular door does not mean that they didn't use their access to establish other doors. Or self-opening doors. Or any number of things. And you have no clue as to how far down it goes. This exploit could have compromised the boot loader or something. The only way to be completely sure is to essentially strip the machine to bare metal and audit every piece of software on it. The safest thing to do, if you want to be completely sure, is to buy a new machine. And even then, you're trusting that the machine you bought hasn't been compromised by the manufacturer or something like that. But it's a known-ish quantity. But that's a "nuke it from orbit" kind of option. Often, being completely sure isn't necessary. We can live with reasonably sure.