Archive for January, 2006
According to John Heasman, security researcher with NGS Software, BIOS based rootkits could be the next step in the continuing advancement of threats to computer security. During a talk last week at the BlackHat Federal conference, he introduced the concept and showed some research on how power management functions could be used to manipulate a system’s BIOS with malicious code.
What’s really scary about that is that a BIOS based rootkit would be a lot harder to detect and remove than traditional operating system based rootkits. Not only would it survive reboots, reinstalls and even operating system changes, if it was well written, it might even be completely independent of the currently running operating system and would thus make it much harder to deal with. One of the strategies to detect and remove a rootkit today is to boot a clean environment, for example a live CD with forensics software on it, and examine the system while the rootkit cannot be active. But a BIOS based rootkit would even be active in such a live-CD environment and could thus hide itself from the forensics software.
There’s a bit of hope, though – this kind of rootkit is unlikely to find its way into worms, viruses and other malware targeting ordinary computer users. The reason for that is pretty simple – there are too many different types of mainboards out there, with two many different BIOS versions. The risk for a worm trying to plant a BIOS based rootkit would be to render the computer itself useless – and a malfunctioning computer is of no use to the worm writer, whose objective is usually to take over the victim’s computer, not make it unusable. But this kind of technique could easily find its way into the toolbox of professional hackers, intelligence services etc, who have other goals they want to achieve by planting malicious software on a victim’s computer.
Resources:
NGS’s research paper
Brian Krebs’ blog @wahingtonpost.com
Technorati : BIOS, NGS, hacking, malware, rootkit
January 28th, 2006
Finally… the GO conference was great, but I’m happy to be home again. After two weeks of two little sleep and too much work, it’s a nice change to be able to sleep in and enjoy a slightly more laid-back lifestyle again. Although of course there’s a ton of work waiting to be done as well.
Anyway, seems like on the last day the “conference cold” (a nasty mix of germs from 25 nations) finally caught up with me… but I’m surviving. I even managed to get through a full set of songs *and* a sermon during last night’s “Service on Sunday”, that was quite amazing. Today my voice seems to be breaking away occasionally, but I’m looking forward to a band rehearsal anyway. Once I’ve caught up with the latest and greates in the world of technology, expect to see some more articles on topics of interest in that area again. Also some more reviews of christian CDs… working on them right now.
January 23rd, 2006
At the conference I’m attending at the moment, I had the chance to teach a seminar on dealing with Internet Pornography. I thought it might be a good idea to publish my concept paper online – if you have any comments and suggestions for improvement, feel free to leave them in the comment section. This is a collection of thoughts, structured the way my talk went, but it’s not necessarily a full-blown article…
Continue Reading January 15th, 2006
Time for a little bit of personal news once again – the reason I’ve been writing less in the last few days is that I’m at my employer’s “global orientation” conference, where we gather new workers from around the world for two weeks of training before sending them out into many different countries. It’s an exciting time and I get to meet loads of interesting people, but it also means a lot of long hours – both for staff and participants.
It’s great to see people from all the corners of the earth getting together to worship God and to gather together in prayer. Some are struggling with their English, but communication between everyone still works somehow, sometimes someone joins in to translate a few words, sometimes gestures replace the right words, but in the end, everyone understands the important things.
For me personally, I just love the buzz of such a conference. Somehow it always feels like coming home. And it’s a great chance to see lots of people I normally don’t see all year, people I’ve been working with – on and off – for four years now. This year, they really had a hard time recognizing me – when they last saw me, my hair was several inches longer and I do look quite different now. It’s actually great fun to look at them staring and wondering if they know me… although by now, most of them know.
Ok, so you know to expect fewer updates in the next few days… but there will be some and I’ll try to post as often as I can.
Technorati : OM, christian, missions
January 11th, 2006
In his CES keynote yesterday, Google CEO Larry Page unveiled the “Google Software Pack”. It contains pretty much nothing new, a first look at its contents confirmed that I have most of it installed already and the things I don’t have installed, I didn’t want.
But it sure makes sense for Google to release this as a software pack – and it’s probably a good way to bring software to the masses that so far has been limited in its distribution to the more tech-savvy parts of the internet community. Besides, the pack contains almost everything that Microsoft is only planning as the features distinguishing their new Windows Vista from the current Windows XP. There’s antispyware, antivirus software (although I must say that Symantec’s offering has never been very convincing to me), desktop search etc. etc….
One thing that seems like a really nice idea is the updater that comes with all this and can be used to make sure that all components of the software pack are always up to date. Maybe this will help the security of Joe Average users and keep a lot of the software updated that’s not covered by Windows Update… that sure would be a step in the right direction.
Further Information: Google Pack provisions for the masses | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com
Some Analysis: Google’s software choices do not threaten Microsoft (yet) | Open Source | ZDNet.com
Technorati : Google, Windows, software
January 7th, 2006
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