Mom said: do not trust the firmware of hard drives

Taking away the bread of news ....

On all the channels flew news, interesting for technical specialists. And also for solving puzzles and crossword puzzles. The rule that illustrates this fact says: the problem is not always found under the lamp, where it is light and convenient to look for. Vulnerability and "bugs" can hide at a different level of search. When insuring against vulnerabilities in programs, one should not forget that they can be embedded in hardware.

Next - we quote RBC.
')

Kaspersky unveiled a unique American spyware program

The US National Security Agency came up with the idea of ​​hiding spyware in hard drives made by Western Digital, Seagate, Toshiba and other leading manufacturers, thus gaining access to information on most computers in the world. It is reported by Reuters, citing a study of Kaspersky Lab and the testimony of former NSA employees.

Following the results of many years of observations, Kaspersky Labs managed to uncover the most complex and sophisticated cyber espionage system known to date. The company's specialists found personal computers in 30 countries infected with one or more of these spyware. The largest number of infected computers, according to her, was in Iran, as well as Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, Mali, Syria, Yemen and Algeria. Most often, computers were attacked in government and military institutions, telecommunications companies, banks, energy companies, companies engaged in nuclear research, media companies and Islamic activists.

The specific country that is behind the spy campaign, Kaspersky Lab does not name. However, it clarifies that it is closely connected with Stuxnet, which was developed by order of the NSA to attack Iran’s nuclear program facilities.

A former NSA official told Reuters that the findings of Kaspersky are true. According to him, the current agency employees rate these spyware as highly as Stuxnet. Another former intelligence official confirmed that the NSA had developed a valuable way to hide spyware in hard drives, but said it did not know what spyware tasks they were assigned.

NSA spokesman Veni Vines declined to comment.

Breakthrough in cyber espionage

On Monday, Kaspersky published the technical details of its research, which should help the institutions that came under the espionage attack to detect malicious programs, some of which date back to 2001.

As the researchers of Kaspersky emphasize, the creators of spy platforms have made a “tremendous technological achievement” by developing modules that can reprogram the firmware of hard drives. Such a deep infection allowed attackers to maintain control of the victim’s computer even if the disk was formatted or the operating system was reinstalled. According to Kaspersky, the “mystery module” can penetrate the firmware of hard drives of more than a dozen manufacturers, including Seagate, Western Digital, Toshiba, Maxtor, Micron Technology, IBM. These brands cover virtually the entire hard drive market.

Western Digital, Seagate and Micron have told Reuters that they know nothing about these spyware modules. Toshiba and Samsung declined to comment on the Kaspersky investigation.

Despite the fact that these highly sophisticated “worms” could be implanted into thousands of hard drives, in practice, hackers showed selectivity and controlled only the computers of the most valuable foreign objects of surveillance, said the head of the global research and analysis department of Kaspersky Lab Kostin Raya.

It should be noted that the recent reports of the detection of viruses and Trojans by the Laboratory. So, on January 27, 2015, the news was "Kaspersky Lab: Regin Trojan is a tool for the NSA " from Der Spiegel (the Regin virus code was used simultaneously by "various institutions from different countries").

As recently as yesterday, another link was published at roem.ru about the publication of a long and complex investigation by the Laboratory about a series of hacks by banks and Obama’s previous statement about the requirement for businesses to disclose their hacking incidents. The network publisher notes: “Evgeny Kaspersky’s Modern Laboratory“ learned to play PR ”and a few hours later, after Obama’s speech, just in time for the newspapers on Monday, she promised to tell journalists about the unknown 100 banks breaking in 2013.” The laboratory began to show an enviable ability to fall on the wave of resonant events.