Article: Potential for Destructive PC Microcode or BIOS Virus
The attached article discusses the potential for microcode based viruses that could potentially flash the BIOS and make the PC completely unusable. This type of attack occurred on a limited basis in 1998 with the CIH virus and here's hoping this type of highly destructive attack won't be forthcoming.
Article: Potential for Destructive PC Microcode or BIOS Virus
Awaiting the PC Killers
AUGUST 22, 2005 (COMPUTERWORLD) - The malicious code enters your network undetected, rapidly infecting more than 100 machines. But this is no ordinary virus. Your antivirus and disk recovery tools can't help, because the disk drives won't spin up at all. The drives are toast. The PCs are completely inoperable. The era of microcode attacks has begun.
Could viruses really attack the low-level microcode that makes disk drives run? It's entirely possible, disk technology experts say. Dimitri Postrigan knows how such a virus might be created -- but he's not telling. Postrigan reverse-engineers and programs hard disk drives at ActionFront Data Recovery Labs.
He says each disk drive has its own internal operating system that enables the device to start up. The operating system microcode resides in a special system area of the disk. "A virus could be written which would destroy the whole system area on a drive. This will make the drive and data almost unrecoverable," Postrigan says.