I am amazed by what the US Government, through the NSA has done. Amazing technical hack.

Basically, anti virus software can't even see the hack, because the firmware on your hard drive gets rewritten. The firmware is the software code used to control your hard drive. Each hard drive has the ability to be updated, to be "flashed" with a software update. And the software in the hard drive was not designed with security in mind, so there is no way to tell if the hard drive has been hacked.

The knowledge required to do this hack is amazing. It's per hard drive manufacturer, using commands that are not public.

The positive news, for now, is only a few computers in the world have been targeted. None in the US.

The hack was found by Kaspersky, that is a Russian based anti-virus company.

How the NSA’s Firmware Hacking Works and Why It’s So Unsettling - Wired Magazine

Labels: hacking, US Chinese Image