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Rootkits in BIOS!

Opinion
Jan 30, 20061 min
Data Center

According to UK-based NGS Consulting the high-level language used by the Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) which is used by the power-management services in operating systems could be subverted to hide a rootkit in the flash memory used by the BIOS. This would be a bad thing …

As quoted in a Contractor UK article: “This is so easy to do,” said Greg Hoglund, editor of Rootkit.com. “You have widely available tools, free compilers for the ACPI language, and high-level languages to write the code in.” Interesting stuff particularly as most motherboards that support flash memory-based BIOSes don’t use a physical write-enable switch or a jumper or provide any kind of support for verifying the BIOS contents …

mark_gibbs

Mark Gibbs is an author, journalist, and man of mystery. His writing for Network World is widely considered to be vastly underpaid. For more than 30 years, Gibbs has consulted, lectured, and authored numerous articles and books about networking, information technology, and the social and political issues surrounding them. His complete bio can be found at http://gibbs.com/mgbio

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