Rabu, 19 Februari 2014
Written by Jon Sutton on 09 February 2014 at 13:00
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It sounds like the stuff of absolute nightmares. Just when you thought your computer was safe, along come graphics cards viruses to lay waste to your precious silicon.
Okay, I might be going slightly overboard here but upon encountering that these strange beasts it of course set me off like a hardware hypochondriac. As far as I was aware both GPUs and RAM were pretty much untouchable by viruses, thanks to the use of volatile memory that flushes any information out. Well. Think again…
Don't Worry, Your GPU Won't Be Ending Up In A Fiery Grave
This dangerous new type of computer virus is capable of lurking on graphics and network cards and is totally immune to any current antivirus software’s detection techniques. Known as the DAGGER virus, it is capable of directly accessing a computer’s memory independently of the CPU, regardless of permissions.
The DAGGER graphics card virus is undoubtedly a complex beast. Rather than directly infecting a GPU it uses the graphics card as a base of operations from which to infect the rest of a PC. As we know, graphics cards have both local RAM and a processor capable of running executable code. The RAM is able to communicate directly with a PC’s memory using Direct Memory Access (DMA). This allows processes to be written to the system RAM without the processor ever knowing it’s occurring. This overcomes CPU permissions and gives the graphics card RAM free reign to communicate with the system RAM.
So far the DAGGER virus is known to have been used on both Linux and Windows systems, with Apple Macs also vulnerable to the attacks. These DMA-based attacks are capable of compromising a host PC without having to exploit and vulnerabilities or weak points of an OS. They are a highly dangerous threat to system security as they are almost totally undetectable; to date no OS has any security mechanics in place to prevent such an attack and antivirus software isn’t capable of scanning the memory on a GPU.
The DAGGER virus was created by researchers and is the only known virus of its type. Once the exploit has found the Windows or Linux lookup tables it is capable of booting up every time your PC starts. Once running, it is theoretically capable of doing whatever it wants.
For now this danger is purely theoretical, with the DAGGER virus the only known one of its type in existence. Still, it’s just enough instil a tingling sense of doubt isn’t it?
Okay, I might be going slightly overboard here but upon encountering that these strange beasts it of course set me off like a hardware hypochondriac. As far as I was aware both GPUs and RAM were pretty much untouchable by viruses, thanks to the use of volatile memory that flushes any information out. Well. Think again…
Don't Worry, Your GPU Won't Be Ending Up In A Fiery GraveThe DAGGER graphics card virus is undoubtedly a complex beast. Rather than directly infecting a GPU it uses the graphics card as a base of operations from which to infect the rest of a PC. As we know, graphics cards have both local RAM and a processor capable of running executable code. The RAM is able to communicate directly with a PC’s memory using Direct Memory Access (DMA). This allows processes to be written to the system RAM without the processor ever knowing it’s occurring. This overcomes CPU permissions and gives the graphics card RAM free reign to communicate with the system RAM.
So far the DAGGER virus is known to have been used on both Linux and Windows systems, with Apple Macs also vulnerable to the attacks. These DMA-based attacks are capable of compromising a host PC without having to exploit and vulnerabilities or weak points of an OS. They are a highly dangerous threat to system security as they are almost totally undetectable; to date no OS has any security mechanics in place to prevent such an attack and antivirus software isn’t capable of scanning the memory on a GPU.
The DAGGER virus was created by researchers and is the only known virus of its type. Once the exploit has found the Windows or Linux lookup tables it is capable of booting up every time your PC starts. Once running, it is theoretically capable of doing whatever it wants.
For now this danger is purely theoretical, with the DAGGER virus the only known one of its type in existence. Still, it’s just enough instil a tingling sense of doubt isn’t it?
