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I ran across this article from last year again and it got me thinking. The article is a story about how a hardware hacker was able to hack hard drive firmware, first to upload his own firmware, but also to take advantage of the embedded controller, and even install linux on the controller. If you haven't read it it's fairly impressive. [Ed's Comment: I would go further and say that it is a amazing piece of hacking, in the traditional meaning of the word.]
It seems that lately there have been a lot of vulnerabilities targeting embedded peripherals. Those in the article come to mind, also badUSB, and some IPMI vulnerabilities.
What do you think? Are the number of attack vectors targeting embedded peripherals a consequence of more powerful controllers? Worse software? More sophisticated attackers? Or just a random occurrence?
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Sunday November 30 2014, @03:04PM
Damn, how'd that slip through?
And yes, you are correct - but how many investigators are likely to notice the visual anomalies? I'm guessing looking at photo studies of the drive the label is from isn't part of the normal data extraction process. Especially if you throw a decoy Truecrypt volume on the visible portion to throw them off the track.
And if you could find a family of drives where the case/controller board/etc. are basically the same for several capacities, with only a few controller parameters tweaked to match the platters, then you could eliminate virtually all evidence. Unless they swapped the controller board itself out of general suspicion there'd be no way to tell anything was wrong.