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Destroying your hard drive is the only way to stop this super-advanced malware
Stoic Joker:
(and as an aside, sometimes, humor is the only medicine for such truths)-wraith808 (February 18, 2015, 10:45 AM)
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Yeah...humor, whistling in the dark, and substance 'abuse' are pretty much the top 3 coping mechanisms available. :D
Giampy:
"It seems Uhuru was able to detect the new malwares from the Equation Group":
http://www.wilderssecurity.com/threads/a-new-antivirus-for-windows-and-linux.373527/#post-2460507
Deozaan:
While it's simple for end users to re-flash their hard drives using executable files provided by manufacturers, it's just about impossible for an outsider to reverse engineer a hard drive, read the existing firmware, and create malicious versions.-http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/02/how-omnipotent-hackers-tied-to-the-nsa-hid-for-14-years-and-were-found-at-last/
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This may be due to my own ignorance on these matters, but I don't understand their claims about it being nearly impossible to be able to read the hard drive firmware and figure it out. People have hacked other "black boxes" by poking and prodding, reverse engineered them, and then written custom code to run on them. What makes hard drive firmwares so different from anything else?
Vurbal:
While it's simple for end users to re-flash their hard drives using executable files provided by manufacturers, it's just about impossible for an outsider to reverse engineer a hard drive, read the existing firmware, and create malicious versions.-http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/02/how-omnipotent-hackers-tied-to-the-nsa-hid-for-14-years-and-were-found-at-last/
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This may be due to my own ignorance on these matters, but I don't understand their claims about it being nearly impossible to be able to read the hard drive firmware and figure it out. People have hacked other "black boxes" by poking and prodding, reverse engineered them, and then written custom code to run on them. What makes hard drive firmwares so different from anything else?
-Deozaan (February 18, 2015, 02:44 PM)
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Because the OS normally doesn't provide low level access to drive hardware to even an administrative user.
mouser:
Because the OS normally doesn't provide low level access to drive hardware to even an administrative user.
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It's not just that -- if the malware tampers with the HARD DRIVE FIRMWARE, it can essentially make the hard drive return fake data, etc. Even with the lowest level access to the hard drive, the hard drive firmware can hide any changes. The only way to fix would be to reflash the hard drive firmware -- and it may very well be that the firmware changes make reflashing impossible via software.
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