Malware: Fighting Malicious Code

Going Deeper: The Possibility of BIOS and Malware Microcode

So, how could an attacker manipulate the knights and king, or the BIOS and CPU of a victim machine, poisoning them to control a target? In this section, we'll explore how an attacker might be able to alter the functioning of the BIOS and CPU themselves, planting malware at the most fundamental level of a victim's computer. Because the techniques for altering the BIOS and manipulating the CPU are different, we'll deal with each one separately in the following sections.

The Possibility of BIOS Malware

One possibility for deeper malware involves attacking the BIOS of the computer system. As we discussed in Chapter 2, one function of the BIOS is to control the very first part of the boot ...