On Feb 14, 11:49*am, wrote:
On Thu, 14 Feb 2013 08:08:32 -0800 (PST), "





wrote:
On Feb 14, 10:38*am, wrote:
On Thu, 14 Feb 2013 05:37:38 -0800 (PST), "

wrote:
*PCs have been hacked on a
large scale in some sophisticated *attacks in a way that
damaged them so that they had to be replaced.

Huh?

Maybe the software had to be reloaded but the hardware was not
damaged. I understand that for a lot of idiots getting a virus (or
simply a bunch of bloatware) on the machine causes them to just buy a
new one, preloaded but if they had their head a quarter inch out of
their ass they would format and *reload the one they have.

It's not farfetched. *I assume you've heard of folks that
decided to update their bios and wound up with a MB that
was kaput? * The critical boot-up code is typicaly stored
today in flash memory. *That makes it possible to do
upgrades, if it becomes essential. * But I've never done
one for precisely that reason. *If something goes wrong,
it could be bye, bye MB. *I guess the other factor was
any such bios upgrade wasn't doing much for me, my
PC was working ok.

Now you would think there would be part of the Flash
that is secure and can't be overwritten by software
when updating the bios.
Not sure if they do that on some PCs, or not. *But
the point is that it's a real problem. *And I remember
hearing about a specific attack from either hackers or
foreign govt that did render thousands of PCs kaput
so that they had to be scrapped.

I suppose it might be possible to have a virus that would overwrite
the BIOS but that would have to be somewhat machine specific.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I looked for the actual event and here's what I found. It
was last year at Aramco. Here is one report on it:


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/1...n_1960113.html

"More than 30,000 computers that it infected (at ARAMCO) were
rendered useless, and had to be replaced," he (Leon Panetta) said.


That's the story line that I heard reported at the time on
probably CBS news too.

However if you google for it now, there are a lot of hits on other
subequent reports that seem to say that the virus destroyed data,
hard drive partitions, etc. in the more normal fashion, ie not so
that the eqpt has to be replaced. I think that this looks more like
a case of Panetta mistating the facts:


http://www.zdnet.com/us-iran-is-to-b...ks-7000005672/

A disparity between Panetta's statement that "more than 30,000
computers that it infected were rendered useless and had to be
replaced," which "virtually destroyed 30,000 computers" is Aramco's
official response, which said that "the virus affected about 30,000
workstations. The workstations have since been cleaned and restored to
service."

But is it possible to overwrite the bios and not have enough
boot code there that would allow the PC to be reloaded? Not sure.
Certainly there have been PCs that were bricked doing bios updates.
But then some, as Oren just posted, apparently have more than
one bios. But then could a virus whack both of them? Who knows...
At the end of the day, you would think there would be one section
with the most basic intelligence in the flash chip so that part
can get the machine up again to reload a full bios. And that most
critical part would be in a part of the chip that can only be
programmed by applying a voltage to a pin that the computer
cannot do itself. Flash chips with that feature existed as long ago
as the
90s. But what each and every PC manufacturer does is
obviously up to them....