5 ms·
It's in wikipedia under "software rot". The problem is, firmware is pretty small. You can't fit much function there. Or it was; I imagine modern hard drives m
by guard-of-terra 12y ago
It's in wikipedia under "software rot".
The problem is, firmware is pretty small. You can't fit much function there.
Or it was; I imagine modern hard drives might have many megabytes of firmware which allows for pretty sophisticated hacks.
- ProAm 12y agoFirmware also operates on an extremely basic level, it's not suffer the same usability/compatibility like normal end users software.
- guard-of-terra 12y agoOnce it needs to communicate via network, it needs a gateway into normal user software somehow. Ditto for accessing the file system.
- ProAm 12y agoI think that is even possible to do at a low level, see how they embed encrypted packets within other packets to sneak out of a network undetected [1]. Even if this technology only lasted 10-15 years that is a LONG time to have the upper hand. [1] http://www.jwz.org/blog/2015/02/ip-over-avian-carriers-nsa-edition/ http://www.jwz.org/blog/2015/02/ip-over-avian-carriers-nsa-e...
- kbart 12y agoSending/receiving an UDP packet is not difficult, even on low level. Knowing what filesystem lies above, implementing some crawler (aka search) is no rocket science too. Combine these two techniques, add some simple command protocol and you have access to any file on a targeted device.
- nitrogen 12y agoHard drives and SSDs have more storage capacity than is actually presented to the OS, mostly for remapping bad sectors, possibly for storing internal metadata for the disk's operation. A malicious firmware could use that unmapped storage capacity to store larger, more versatile payloads.