Lesson plan
BadBIOS
BadBIOS is alleged malware described by network security researcher Dragoș Ruiu in October 31, 2013 with the ability to communicate between instances of itself across air gaps using ultrasonic communication between a computer's speakers and microphone. To date, there have been no proven occurrences of this malware. Ruiu says that the malware is able to infect the BIOS of computers running Windows, Mac OS X, BSD and Linux as well as spread infection over USB flash drives. Rob Graham of Errata Security produced a detailed analysis of each element of the descriptions of BadBIOS's capabilities, describing the software as "plausible", whereas Paul Ducklin on the Sophos Naked Security blog suggested "It's possible, of course, that this is an elaborate hoax". After Ruiu posted data dumps which supposedly demonstrated the existence of the virus, "all signs of maliciousness were found to be normal and expected data".
Article summary
BadBIOS is alleged malware described by network security researcher Dragoș Ruiu in October 31, 2013 with the ability to communicate between instances of itself across air gaps using ultrasonic communication between a computer's speakers and microphone. To date, there have been no proven occurrences of this malware. Ruiu says that the malware is able to infect the BIOS of computers running Windows, Mac OS X, BSD and Linux as well as spread infection over USB flash drives. Rob Graham of Errata Security produced a detailed analysis of each element of the descriptions of BadBIOS's capabilities, describing the software as "plausible", whereas Paul Ducklin on the Sophos Naked Security blog suggested "It's possible, of course, that this is an elaborate hoax". After Ruiu posted data dumps which supposedly demonstrated the existence of the virus, "all signs of maliciousness were found to be normal and expected data".
Key claims
No claims recorded.
Discussion questions
- Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
- Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
- If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?
Bibliography
No sources recorded.
Key claims and bibliography are generated from the same tracked claims and sources as the article page.