Need Another Reason For Layered Protection? Here’s One.

It’s not just you and me that have to worry about malware. This week, tech giant Dell discovered malware in its delivery of motherboards. The company is now in the process of overhauling its testing process to resolve issues before dispatching hardware to customers.

The culprit seems to be motherboards for PowerEdge servers that might  contain the W32.Spybot worm in flash storage. As reported in PC World:

Flash on motherboards are susceptible to the same kind of malware infections that USB flash devices are prone to, said Simha Sethumadhavan, assistant professor of computer science at Columbia University. This incident shows how hardware, either flash or a processor, if hacked, can be used as a way to transmit malware.

"All software runs on hardware. If the processor is hacked then it can subvert all software countermeasures. Since hardware is the root of trust, attacks on hardware are potentially more dangerous," Sethumadhavan said.

As you might recall, earlier this week wrote about the USB malware issue. This motherboard attack reinforces the need for layered of protection, as you never know if the problem will come from a tainted delivery batch or from your best friend’s infected PC.  Do you have layered protection?