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First-ever UEFI Rootkit Spotted in the Wild

posted by chromas on Friday September 28 2018, @07:40PM   Printer-friendly
from the false-flag-to-justify-forced-secureboot dept.

canopic jug writes:

The company ESET, based in Slovakia, has announced finding the first-ever UEFI rootkit in the wild. Once infected with the malware the only option is to reflash the SPI firmware or else replace the whole motherboard.

First spotted in early 2017, LoJax is a trojaned version of a popular legitimate LoJack laptop anti-theft software from Absolute Software, which installs its agent into the system's BIOS to survive OS re-installation or drive replacement and notifies device owner of its location in case the laptop gets stolen.

According to researchers, the hackers slightly modified the LoJack software to gain its ability to overwrite UEFI module and changed the background process that communicates with Absolute Software's server to report to Fancy Bear's C&C servers.

UEFI is an overly complex replacement for BIOS, and is often conflated with one of its payloads, Restricted Boot aka Secure Boot.

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  • (Score: 4, Funny) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday September 28 2018, @11:03PM (3 children)

    by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us (6553) on Friday September 28 2018, @11:03PM (#741587) Journal

    So what we need is a Supreme Extensible Firmware Interface, which can oversee the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface which oversees your system. SEFI will be able to rebuild the UEFI when it gets corrupted.

    Next year: Absolute Extensible Firmware Interface which will supervise the SEFI's oversight of UEFI.

    --
    This sig for rent.
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  • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 29 2018, @12:35AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 29 2018, @12:35AM (#741619)

    So, it's like a pothole crew with multiple levels of supervisors?

  • (Score: 3, Funny) by MostCynical on Saturday September 29 2018, @05:11AM

    by MostCynical (2589) on Saturday September 29 2018, @05:11AM (#741710) Journal

    I see where you're going..

    Universal
    Supreme
    Absolute
    F
    U
    C
    K
    Y
    E
    A
    H

    --
    "I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex