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BIOS leech
Make the Flash BIOS the viral nest which it should be. | |
The Flash BIOS is an ideal home for a virus. One which would survive OS reinstallation / hard-disk replacement. One which would do nothing at all until X:XX, XX/XX/XX, when it clears the hapless EEPROM's contents entirely. One which would contain BIOS flash hook codes that would work with the most popular
machines on the market (i.e. used by large institutions.) The manufacturers would realize that the missing Flash-enable jumper feature on most motherboards is a foolish lack of forethought. But it would be too late for millions of machines.
BIOS Virus Turns PCs into Paperweights.
http://www.internet...news/news0721-4.htm [novox, Jul 24 2001, last modified Oct 21 2004]
[link]
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I've had this idea too --- I've wondered why Flash-based viruses aren't more prevalent. Maybe just because they're so much harder to write. |
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The specificity of BIOS code
and the fact that not all
operating systems allow
software to interact with
hardware are the primary
reasons we don't see more of
this stuff. Why write a virus
that *could* only impact - say
- 50,000 people (and more
likely would only impact a
fraction of that number)? |
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[phoenix] Good point! This is why we are seeing so many email/internet based viruses/worms. It's a quick way to infect millions. |
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[novox] Especially when Billy
G. makes it so easy. |
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Right....this is why I have Linux on my computer. As more and more programs become compatible with Linux, I will slowly convert and hopefully won't need Windows anymore. |
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Viruses. Brilliant. Let's crash the damn economy. Great plan. |
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You really think the whole damn economy can be crashed with viruses? I would think if it were that easy someone would have done it by now, considering the things the economy does to people. |
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The whole damn economy can be crashed by somebody sneezing at the wrong time. The whole system is inherently unstable. America has just been lucky recently, that's all *evil grin*. |
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This could work.. There was acctually a BIOS that kept a program resident.. I can't remember, unfortunately, but no matter what version of windows you installed (even after formatting the HD), it would install this little bit of spyware right alongside it. |
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