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Bump this n times. As I said before, it's a new world -- we know about MUSCULAR. More relevantly, but less recently, we also know about what took out the uraniu

Bump this n times. As I said before, it's a new world -- we know about MUSCULAR. More relevantly, but less recently, we also know about what took out the uranium enrichment facility at Na'antz (sp?): the virus Israel and the U.S. have more or less admitted to creating, with a wink and a nod, that we have seen evidence of elsewhere in the world. I confess I don't have the links anymore, nor the time to go hunting them down again, but Google does. Remember: There are already documented cases of virii making themselves almost entirely undetectable, crossing air gaps on USB sticks, and then blowing up, e.g., specific brands of peripherals (such as industrial centrifuges) by altering their firmware. Is it really a stretch to imagine a variant that (a) is bios-based and (b) uses the tech behind every modem since 300 baud -- the modulation of digital data into sound? That breaks itself up into undetectable pieces? We've seen these techniques before.

undoware 13y ago
(..where by 'undetectable' I mean, 'undetectable as a virus' -- the technique is to bypass AV scans by distributing modules of code that are themselves innocent but combine in dangerous ways; the interview I read with one of the guys at Kaspersky described it in detail.)
dsl 13y ago
Yes it is a stretch. a. BIOS are all insanely different. A motherboard manufacturer can switch ethernet controllers within a run of a single board and ship an entirely new BIOS. You would need to generate thousands of viral stubs to get the infection spread being claimed, and the malware would need to move around GB of these BIOS so it has them handy when it runs into a new motherboard. b. Researchers have worked on this and demonstrated it was possible. They had to modify off the shelf hardware to make it work. PC speakers are not designed to emit frequencies outside the audible range. It's like saying "we have the technology for cell phones, and my home router has a radio built in, it must be able to talk to cell towers!" The situation where I see his claims being plausible is if a state actor has broken in and modified his hardware, and combined it with a viral threat custom built for what they know he has in his home.
- Amadou 13y ago
  They had to modify off the shelf hardware to make it work. I would like to read about this experiment you mention, do you have a link?
deleted 13y ago
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undoware 13y ago

(..where by 'undetectable' I mean, 'undetectable as a virus' -- the technique is to bypass AV scans by distributing modules of code that are themselves innocent but combine in dangerous ways; the interview I read with one of the guys at Kaspersky described it in detail.)

dsl 13y ago

Yes it is a stretch. a. BIOS are all insanely different. A motherboard manufacturer can switch ethernet controllers within a run of a single board and ship an entirely new BIOS. You would need to generate thousands of viral stubs to get the infection spread being claimed, and the malware would need to move around GB of these BIOS so it has them handy when it runs into a new motherboard. b. Researchers have worked on this and demonstrated it was possible. They had to modify off the shelf hardware to make it work. PC speakers are not designed to emit frequencies outside the audible range. It's like saying "we have the technology for cell phones, and my home router has a radio built in, it must be able to talk to cell towers!" The situation where I see his claims being plausible is if a state actor has broken in and modified his hardware, and combined it with a viral threat custom built for what they know he has in his home.

Amadou 13y ago
They had to modify off the shelf hardware to make it work. I would like to read about this experiment you mention, do you have a link?

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]