Collaborate Disseminate
I am concerned about the threat of persistent malware entrenched in device firmware. I am not familiar with the intricacies of firmware security, so I am turning to SE for help.
I recently learned of FSF-certified laptops th… Continue reading Open source firmware as mitigation against firmware persistent malware?
I have a Samsung Evo 850 SSD, the 500GB model and it’s supposed to benefit from Full Disk Encryption (FDE). Once you set a HDD password in the BIOS the FDE is supposed to kick in.
However, I was surprised to discover that th… Continue reading My Samsung SSD password is case insensitive, how does this affect Full Disk Encryption?
To secure my PC I have setup a BIOS password, preventing any access from a live-cd.
Recently I’ve noticed that when the BIOS asks for my password, I just have to press Enter to boot. It doesn’t work if I type just anything, but it works i… Continue reading How do you know if the bios has been compromised?
I read on the Wikipedia article on DMA attacks that a misconfigured BIOS allowed for this type of attacks. I am asking whether, given the hardware I am using, DMA attacks are possible and whether I can mitigate them by changing options in … Continue reading Preventing DMA Attacks
I wonder how hard it it to infect a laptop or netbook in 60 minutes or less in a way the victim cannot easily clean their machine by wiping hard disk drives.
Let’s assume the following:
The attacker has physical access to the machine. I… Continue reading Realistic: Exploiting a computer on BIOS/ hardware level in less than an hour? (Infinite preparation time)
If a system becomes infected and does not have any other storage units besides the one hard drive.
Is it there any other way for a rootkit to stay on the system besides infecting the BIOS OR the MBR of said drive after a ‘n… Continue reading Besides MBR & BIOS, is it possible for a rootkit to stay persistent after a format of the hard drive?
To successfully defend the BIOS from malicious rootkit installation or other malware that writes itself inside BIOS I wonder if these ideas are possible or even done yet:
Can you program the BIOS itself in a way that it onl… Continue reading BIOS upgrade only with PGP-signature / encrypting the whole BIOS
Absolute persistence technology amounts to a persistent rootkit pre-installed by many device manufacturers (Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Samsung, Toshiba, etc) to facilitate LoJack for laptops, and other backdoor services:
The Absolut… Continue reading Detecting and removing Absolute persistence technology
In many cases where a Trusted Platform Module (TPM chip) is employed, it is soldered directly onto the motherboard. Ostensibly the motherboard manufacturer is then solely responsible for integrating the BIOS and TPM module, and the overall… Continue reading Trusted Platform Module, daughterboard vs onboard TPM?
It seems to me that to maximise server security, one ought – in addition to the usual security measures implemented in software – to prevent the overwriting of certain parts of the server system, such that only physical access will circumv… Continue reading Write-protection at hardware level for security