On Thu, 01 Mar 2012 06:30:06 +1100, Rod Speed wrote:

Tim Watts wrote
The Natural Philosopher wrote

exactly, An undetectable change that results in no detectable activity
by anyone in the whole universe is not a security risk.

You may have a "potentially detectable" change, but for any practical
detection mechanism, I feel fairly safe in asserting that it could
potentially be hacked so as not to leave a trace *detectable by the
detection mechanism".

Doesnt matter if you are fairly certain or not, there are obvious
examples where that isnt possible. Most obviously with a full restore
from image using a machine that isnt even net accessible.

Technically, is it possible to re-flash a PC's BIOS from a binary running
with sufficient permissions under the host OS, such that malicious code
could potentially run undetected following reboot, regardless of whether
hard disk contents were restored from an image on another system?

I've never heard of it happening, but I'm curious whether it could in
theory be done.

cheers

Jules