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.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Revek on Saturday September 29 2018, @03:05AM (1 child)
I know right. A jumper or switch to prevent writes to the flash. Crazy right. It would work but its crazy and all management drones know if it sounds crazy and works its not worth doing.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 29 2018, @03:52AM
A switch or jumper? Are you insane, that will add an entire one-tenth of a cent to the BoM. How can the CEOs of the computer manufacturers afford another yacht each with a huge slice like that to their profit margin?