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Microprocessor Backdoor Risks: New Security Challenges for Linux

Apr 16, 2008 •

Anthony Pell

1 min read

Topics Covered

malware security threat Linux attack vector backdoor attack hardware exploit microprocessor

For years, hackers have focused on finding bugs in computer software that give them unauthorized access to computer systems, but now there's another way to break in: Hack the microprocessor.
On Tuesday, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign demonstrated how they altered a computer chip to grant attackers back-door access to a computer. It would take a lot of work to make this attack succeed in the real world, but it would be virtually undetectable.

It's actually kind of funny that they decided to mention that this system was "running the Linux operating system". Regardless of the OS, a hardware level exploit such as this poses such a bigger threat than just OS security. Although this type of exploit is much harder to deploy rather than software, this article poses interesting situations on how exactly it can be carried out.

The link for this article located at Network World is no longer available.