If Dragos Ruiu isn't crazy, "badBIOS" is the worst thing to infect a computer, ever.

Came across an article about this on Ars Technica and I thought I'd share.

"We had an air-gapped computer that just had its [firmware] BIOS reflashed, a fresh disk drive installed, and zero data on it, installed from a Windows system CD," Ruiu said. "At one point, we were editing some of the components and our registry editor got disabled. It was like: wait a minute, how can that happen? How can the machine react and attack the software that we're using to attack it? This is an air-gapped machine and all of a sudden the search function in the registry editor stopped working when we were using it to search for their keys."

Over the past two weeks, Ruiu has taken to Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus to document his investigative odyssey and share a theory that has captured the attention of some of the world's foremost security experts. The malware, Ruiu believes, is transmitted though USB drives to infect the lowest levels of computer hardware. With the ability to target a computer's Basic Input/Output System (BIOS), Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI), and possibly other firmware standards, the malware can attack a wide variety of platforms, escape common forms of detection, and survive most attempts to eradicate it.

But the story gets stranger still. In posts here, here, and here, Ruiu posited another theory that sounds like something from the screenplay of a post-apocalyptic movie: "badBIOS," as Ruiu dubbed the malware, has the ability to use high-frequency transmissions passed between computer speakers and microphones to bridge airgaps.

USB thumb drives infecting BIOSes sounds a lot like Stuxnet, but if he's right this, thing is leaps and bounds beyond that. The creepy, paranoia inducing bit about HF communication using speakers and microphones seems really out there, but consider in principle it's basically the same type of analog transmission modems do (only in HF in an open room).

Link to story on Ars

You must've missed the large thread that already exists here:

Meet “badBIOS,” the mysterious Mac and PC malware that jumps airgaps

reply to post by theantediluvian


Disable microphone hardware.
Don't use strange USB devices.
Disable IR and Bluetooth (just to be safe)

Done?




EDIT: on further reading about this bug, mebbe not.

_BoneZ_


Meet “badBIOS,” the mysterious Mac and PC malware that jumps airgaps

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