Tag: objective

PC vendors scramble as Intel announces vulnerability in firmware

Enlarge / All the Cores are affected by a major vulnerability in management firmware—as are Xeon servers and Atom, Celeron and Pentium devices. (credit: Intel ) Intel has issued a security alert that management firmware on a number of recent PC, server, and Internet-of-Things processor platforms is vulnerable to remote attack. Using the vulnerabilities, the most severe of which was uncovered by Mark Ermolov and Maxim Goryachy of Positive Technologies Research, remote attackers could launch commands on a host of Intel-based computers, including laptops and desktops shipped with Intel Core processors since 2015. They could gain access to privileged system information, and millions of computers could essentially be taken over as a result of the bug. The company has posted a detection tool on its support website for Windows and Linux to help identify systems that are vulnerable. In the security alert, members of Intel’s security team stated that “in response to issues identified by external researchers, Intel has performed an in-depth comprehensive security review of its Intel® Management Engine (ME), Intel® Trusted Execution Engine (TXE), and Intel® Server Platform Services (SPS) with the objective of enhancing firmware resilience.” Four vulnerabilities were discovered that affect Intel Management Engine firmware versions 11.0 through 11.20. Two were found in earlier versions of ME, as well as two in Server Platform Services version 4.0 firmware and two in TXE version 3.0. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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PC vendors scramble as Intel announces vulnerability in firmware

Tuesday’s massive ransomware outbreak was, in fact, something much worse

Enlarge / Code in Tuesday’s attack, shown on the left, was altered to permanently destroy hard drives. (credit: Matt Suiche ) Tuesday’s massive outbreak of malware that shut down computers around the world has been almost universally blamed on ransomware, which by definition seeks to make money by unlocking data held hostage only if victims pay a hefty fee. Now, some researchers are drawing an even bleaker assessment—that the malware was a wiper with the objective of permanently destroying hard drives. Initially, researchers said the malware was a new version of the Petya ransomware that first struck in early 2016 . Later, researchers said it was a new, never-before-seen ransomware package that mimicked some of Petya’s behaviors. With more time to analyze the malware, researchers on Wednesday are highlighting some curious behavior for a piece of malware that was nearly perfect in almost all other respects: its code is so aggressive that it’s impossible for victims to recover their data. In other words, the researchers said, the payload delivered in Tuesday’s outbreak wasn’t ransomware at all. Instead, its true objective was to permanently destroy as many hard drives as possible on infected networks, in much the way the Shamoon disk wiper left a wake of destruction in Saudi Arabia. Some researchers have said Shamoon is likely the work of developers sponsored by an as-yet unidentified country. Researchers analyzing Tuesday’s malware—alternatively dubbed PetyaWrap, NotPetya, and ExPetr—are speculating the ransom note left behind in Tuesday’s attack was, in fact, a hoax intended to capitalize on media interest sparked by last month’s massive WCry outbreak . Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Tuesday’s massive ransomware outbreak was, in fact, something much worse