BIOS infected by rootkit for the first time

26th April 2009

BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) is responsible for saving the system configuration unchanged, and also performs basic functions of information input and output. So, it is almost impossible to hack it. Nevertheless, two Argentine specialists, called Alfredo Ortega and Anibal Sacco, employees of the Company Core Security Technologies managed to do it.
At the conference on information security, CanSecWest, they showed how to infect BIOS with a rootkit. In particular, they managed to infect computers running under Windows and OpenBSD, as well as a virtual machine under OpenBSD VMware Player. The method proposed by Ortega and Sacco requires beforehand compromising the machine or having physical access to the machine. The effects of such contamination are really disastrous. The computer remains infected even after deleting data on the hard drive, changing the BIOS firmware and reinstalling the operating system.
As you can see, a smart programmer can find a clue to any task, even the most impossible one. Proved by life.