Attacking Your Hardware

As if we needed a reminder that no matter how secure an OS is, there is always something out there that is able to get through. This is especially true if that something is a virus designed to attack your PC’s hardware… specifically, your CPU.

Firmware is not really something that is as easy to patch as something with a browser or OS. This leads me to thinking that, this time, both Windows and Linux users need to be aware of the products they are buying based on this news. While in this case, one might be tempted to suggest that we just avoid Intel products, clearly this problem goes much deeper than that. Basically there is no answer. Outside of being vigilant about which technologies we put trust into, it does not appear that we have a lot of options here.

Being that this is a firmware issue, why not allow us to flash the firmware? Not sure if this really would fix the larger problem — the fact that we really have very little in place to protect our hardware. Considering how much stuff is out there to give our software, operating systems, and other software adequate protection, it does make one wonder why we are not seeing more effort being put into keeping our hardware safe. Perhaps that is because of the fact at this point, there is not really a way to do so just yet.

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• BLACKBOX CABLE TRAY SUPPORT HARDWARE
• J2320 Services Router with JUNOS, 1GB Memory, Hardware Encryption, AC Power Supply
• 9550SXU-8LP SATA II Hardware RAID Card - PCI-X 8-Port 128MB Management Suite
• 9650SE-8LPML SATA II PCI-Express Hardware RAID Card - 8-Port 256MB DDR2
• VisionVault Smart NAS Appliance Barebones - Gigabit LAN Hardware RAID 0 5 Span 128MB DDR 4 Hotswap SATA-II Bays Automated Backup iTunes & Peer-to-Peer File Sharing via FTP & HTTP
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• 01-SSC-8808 01SSC8808 3YR MNT UMA EM5000 HARDWARE MLIC
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• AMCC/3Ware SATA2 Hardware Raid Controller Kit 9650SE2LPML