mboy
Premium
join:2001-04-13
Little Falls, NJ
| reply to zmaugy
Re: A super trojan?
Sounds like nonsense to me. Now the guy says it infected his CPU? Rediculous.
Even infecting the CMOS sounds pretty outta whack these days. Most use some type of checksum to validate the file.
Besides, how much code can be written to 256KB that is almost ALL used up for hardware instructions. |
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zmaugy
join:2003-05-24
Slovenia | I hope you're right.
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French fries. |
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novaflare
The Dragon Was Here
Premium
join:2002-01-24
Barberton, OH
| reply to mboy
said by mboy  :
Sounds like nonsense to me. Now the guy says it infected his CPU? Rediculous.
Even infecting the CMOS sounds pretty outta whack these days. Most use some type of checksum to validate the file.
Besides, how much code can be written to 256KB that is almost ALL used up for hardware instructions.
bios infection possible
cpu infection not possible
ram infection not possible
hard drive mother board possible (hard drive mother board is the board on the hd it has some bios chips aka s.m.a.r.t)
video card possible that it over wrote part of his video bios.
keyboard bios chip on keyboards with programable funtion keys very possible i have a example here at my house with a unknown unnamed virus i can not scan the keyboard and dare not allow it to infect my computer to scan the computer.
Im going to post and ask him if he has a key board with programable keys and also alert him that it could be storeing it self in his vid card.
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Martinus
Premium
join:2001-08-06
EU
1 edit | said by novaflare :
video card possible that it over wrote part of his video bios.
But in that case the card bios would be screwed and the card wouldn't function correctly I guess
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novaflare
The Dragon Was Here
Premium
join:2002-01-24
Barberton, OH
| said by Martinus :
said by novaflare :
video card possible that it over wrote part of his video bios.
But in that case the card bios would be screwed and the card wouldn't function correctly I guess
Accualy not true. Ive seen at least one case personaly where the video card bios was infected with a virus yes it caused more video related errors in windows error and even reporting. But hell i was playing (looseing badly) cs on it with good frame rate and no noticable errors.
For a viri or trojan to cause problems it would need to over right a important area on the cards bios. Ive seen bios hacks that let you put your name in a video cards bios so that it comes up on the splash screen dureing the cards own post test. Say some image and some text total size 10k and theres still room left for more. A virus can be as small as 4 to 7 k or smaller. A typical bios chip is 256k or larger and the bios code it self may only use 190k of that. Theres plenty of wiggle room or can be on a bios chip. Some bioses now have filler in the bios code that does nothign but take up the rest of the space.
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kpatz
MY HEAD A SPLODE
Premium
join:2003-06-13
Manchester, NH
| Do video cards have flash BIOSes? I always thought whatever firmware they ran was loaded by the video driver when Windows boots up. At least I've never heard of flashing a video card, but I suppose some cards do have this.
Even if someone coded a virus and stored it in the filler space of a flash BIOS, it would still have to be hooked into the executable portion of the BIOS, in order for the virus to execute. Otherwise, it is just a bunch of bits that never gets executed. Hooking into the executable portion, would have to be customized for every BIOS version.
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novaflare
The Dragon Was Here
Premium
join:2002-01-24
Barberton, OH
| said by kpatz :
Do video cards have flash BIOSes? I always thought whatever firmware they ran was loaded by the video driver when Windows boots up. At least I've never heard of flashing a video card, but I suppose some cards do have this.
Even if someone coded a virus and stored it in the filler space of a flash BIOS, it would still have to be hooked into the executable portion of the BIOS, in order for the virus to execute. Otherwise, it is just a bunch of bits that never gets executed. Hooking into the executable portion, would have to be customized for every BIOS version.
yup but it does happen. And youd be suprised at what you can flash the bios on vid cards sound card cd burners harddrive dvd roms and even players you hook up to your tv. Ive personaly seen a viri infected keyboard as i said. And i used it to infect at the managers request some realy old cash registers so she could get new ones. These things were constantly crashing and she wanted them gone but the franchise owner wouldnt replace them untill they were totaly dead. So i made sure they were dead hooked keyboard up to the computer that controlled them and hit f13 and watched the registers crash.
It is entirely possible for this all to happen its rare as hell and if it infact happened it is likly a viri/trojan that some oen delib targeted him with prob totaly custom one of a kind deal. Few months ago we found out who infected the guys keyboard and why. Some punk kid that use to mow his lawn and do some basic stuff around the house minor repairs and some computer work for the guy was caught ripping the guy off he fired him and pressed charges kid got 3 months in dh for it and restitution . well before he could confront the kid and before he called the cops the kid got wise that he was caught and infected the keyboard with this nasty.
He never named it And it was never in the wild.
Thankfully viri like these are so generaly so destrutive and fast acting they cant get out in the wild they make the system they infect crash and become unbootable almost imediatly after infection/execution.
I still doubt this is the case with this supper trojan My bet is hes installign software from a back up or maybe useign a pirated copy of xp pro or other pirated os or maybe just a activation crack cause he is anoyed by the windows activation and doesnt want to send out all the personal info that was "sent with activation" accordign to all the xp anti hype.
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theskulptor
Premium
join:2004-05-15
Minneapolis, MN
| reply to kpatz
Here is an example of a flashing a vid card, and why one would do it. Though aside from potentially disrupting the operations of the vid card, if someone added malicious code to the firmware of a video card would it act on any other part of the pc?
'»www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=767726' |
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x539
join:2003-08-23
Oklahoma City, OK
| reply to kpatz
quote:
Do video cards have flash BIOSes? I always thought whatever firmware they ran was loaded by the video driver when Windows boots up. At least I've never heard of flashing a video card, but I suppose some cards do have this.
Another reason would be to flash a PC video card with the correct ROM needed for it to work in a Mac. I did this a few years ago on an ATi card. |
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novaflare
The Dragon Was Here
Premium
join:2002-01-24
Barberton, OH
| said by x539 :
quote:
Do video cards have flash BIOSes? I always thought whatever firmware they ran was loaded by the video driver when Windows boots up. At least I've never heard of flashing a video card, but I suppose some cards do have this.
Another reason would be to flash a PC video card with the correct ROM needed for it to work in a Mac. I did this a few years ago on an ATi card.
I remember seeing that posted i understand theres not alot of diff between the bios on the cards. Was right after macs started useing pin compatible agp cards.
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x539
join:2003-08-23
Oklahoma City, OK
| quote:
I remember seeing that posted i understand theres not alot of diff between the bios on the cards. Was right after macs started useing pin compatible agp cards.
If you mean the difference between the BIOS on a Mac card and on a PC card, it's a difference between working and not working ;-P. Basically the Mac ROMs contain the necessary low-level drivers for Open Firmware to recognize the card.
If you mean the difference between the BIOS on one Mac card and another similar card by the same manufacturer, that's the whole point of the exercise. Basically at the time that this was more common there was not a lot of choice in the Mac video card market. Not very many cards were available in a Mac version, and most of them were significantly more expensive than their PC counterparts. Apple supported and shipped certain cards in their machines. The ROMs included on those cards could be extracted and flashed onto the same or similar PC versions of the cards, giving the person who wanted to upgrade their Mac more choice and cheaper options (albeit at a greater risk). I don't know whether people still do this or not. There are more cards available in Mac versions these days, so I've seen no compelling reason to do so myself since then. |
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