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Malware based on CPU profiles is coming
AVOIDING Microsoft's Windows OS is a good way to avoid malware attacks, but that might not be the case much longer, with attackers turning their attention from software to CPU chips.
Traditionally malware targets vulnerabilities in the operating system, meaning users either have to put up with frequent patches and having to run and maintain anti-virus software or use alternatives to Microsoft's Windows. Now researchers from Ecole Superiore d'Informatique, Electronique, Automatique have demonstrated how to make malware target a particular processor, ignoring the operating system altogether.
Whether the attack is discriminating the operating system or the hardware, the fundamental technique is the same - find a flaw in the system and exploit it. And processors architectures can be identified by figuring out how the chip handles arithmetic calculations and the way it encodes numbers.
However this technique isn't quite as fine-grained yet as malware attackers might want. The researchers admit that their identification techniques cannot pin-point particular processors, however they say that such an attack could "enable far more precise and targeted attacks, at a finer level in a large network of heterogeneous machines but with generic malware".
More complex tests will have to be conducted in order to bore down to specific processor models, however even being able to target a family of processors should concern those who are forced to use machines based on particular architectures.
Being able to target specific hardware is particularly dangerous as certain industries specify hardware configurations that have passed relevant testing. While operating systems can be patched with relative ease, replacing hardware is something that is altogether more time consuming and costly. µ
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And what's wrong with the blind brute force approach?
Try all exploits till one works.
This aint new, it's mearly defining what has been used in buffer based attacks since day one. (reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shellcode )
CPU specific code for as in machine code is another misnomer in that todays CPU's run internal microcode which means the x86 instructions are not close to the metal as you have the microcode layer below that.
Now an expliot that used a flaw in the chip itelf to give you root would still need you to get past the opetrating system layer. So as such this article is basicly some twerp reinventing a wheel without spokes and saying it works without relay thinking it thru as well as the old wheel!
Now area's to keep an eye out for and will be apparently invented this comming year though already been known for years are:
BIOS hidden malware be it the OS or a network card, HD's or indeed GPU.
Chipset malware
microcode malware in the x86 translate engine (yes in a way CPU's today have a bios), why else would your CPU need a driver one could ask :).
RFC flaws
TCP/IP stack flaws
Bottom line werever code or logic is run from none fixed area's then it can be changed for good or for worse.
Real security is ar your network level, if you activly control what and what cannot goes out and to were then you can have the leakest box in the world as no details would get out, nor would such malware get in.
But computer security is like the common cold, you can mitigate it's effect but you can never stop tomorrow's flavour today with yesterdays defences.
But the biggest problem is and will always be the user, mostly those with a password of "god" or "jesus" or indeed "password". If we had car highways like the superhighway(sic) then even joe public would actualy see were the real problem on computer security actualy was!
Is the reason Intel bought Mcafee???
Is the reason Intel bought Mcafee???
This is silly, it's very easy to poll a CPU (or read the variable made available by the OS) to see what kind it is, but to obtain access to a CPU to exploit something like that you'd still first need to overcome OS protection (and yes linux and such actually has some measures to prevent certain CPU exploits), and this isn't new, there have been discussion about this for ages long before somebody even started to try to exploit it and it's known to CPU makers too.