Not a great threat yet, but something to be conscious about in the potential near future:
Virus targets AMD processors
Kills the chip rather than the OS
By Nick Farrell: Monday 28 August 2006, 15:13
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SECURITY OUTFIT Symantec has discovered a proof of concept virus that targets AMD processors rather than operating systems.
There are two versions of the worm, one aims at 32-bit and the other at 64-bit AMD processors. Symantec has called them "virus w32.bounds" and "w64.bounds".
Although the worm is just proof of concept code, there are some fears that it could be used as a starting point for creating malware. If some hacker does manage to turn the code into something more destructive, it could mean that they could make a worm that can move across different operating systems.
Vincent Weafer, senior director of Symantec's Security Response Group said that once hackers got to the processor level, they could rip into the core hardware and evade kernel and user protection.
Symantec figures that the next stage would be to mix the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the malware to create a single virus that can target both Intel and AMD families. The technique probably would not be used as a mass attack, but could be quite good as a targeted take-down method, Symantec says.
Most virus writers can’t be arsed with hitting the chip as it is a lot easier to design hacks into operating systems. There has not been a good chip level threat since 1998 when the CIH/Chernobyl worm embedded itself into the flash-BIOS of several million computers and destroyed data.
More here and here. µ
