The World's First Unkillable UEFI Bootkit For Linux

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Over the past decade, a new class of infections has threatened Windows users. By infecting the firmware that runs immediately before the operating system loads, these UEFI bootkits continue to run even when the hard drive is replaced or reformatted. Now the same type of chip-dwelling malware has been found in the wild for backdooring Linux machines. Researchers at security firm ESET said Wednesday that Bootkitty -- the name unknown threat actors gave to their Linux bootkit -- was uploaded to VirusTotal earlier this month. Compared to its Windows cousins, Bootkitty is still relatively rudimentary, containing imperfections in key under-the-hood functionality and lacking the means to infect all Linux distributions other than Ubuntu. That has led the company researchers to suspect the new bootkit is likely a proof-of-concept release. To date, ESET has found no evidence of actual infections in the wild.

Still, Bootkitty suggests threat actors may be actively developing a Linux version of the same sort of unkillable bootkit that previously was found only targeting Windows machines. 'Whether a proof of concept or not, Bootkitty marks an interesting move forward in the UEFI threat landscape, breaking the belief about modern UEFI bootkits being Windows-exclusive threats,' ESET researchers wrote. 'Even though the current version from VirusTotal does not, at the moment, represent a real threat to the majority of Linux systems, it emphasizes the necessity of being prepared for potential future threats.' As ESET notes, the discovery is nonetheless significant because it demonstrates someone -- most likely a malicious threat actor -- is pouring resources and considerable know-how into creating working UEFI bootkits for Linux. Currently, there are few simple ways for people to check the integrity of the UEFI running on either Windows or Linux devices. The demand for these sorts of defenses will likely grow in the coming years.

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