What is Digg?139 Comments
- Osiriscky3, on 10/12/2007, -11/+111someone set us up the bomb
- TomP, on 10/12/2007, -12/+96All your AMD are belong to us
- theredbicycle, on 10/12/2007, -14/+74....must be all that crack you've been smoking
- davdav, on 10/12/2007, -9/+69you have no chance to survive make your time
- EasY_TargeT, on 10/12/2007, -7/+66So this is Intel's counter to AMD's acquisition of ATI
- Ramble, on 10/12/2007, -7/+66It's an internet joke you frigging idiots.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -8/+65Ninjas?
- eplawless, on 10/12/2007, -10/+65We get virus :(
- trogdoor, on 10/12/2007, -1/+52For those that don't get it that is an excerpt from http://www.adequacy.org/stories/2001.12.2.42056.2147.html
- heavensblade23, on 10/12/2007, -10/+60MOVE ZIG MOVE ZIG MOVE ZIG
- titlesaysitall, on 10/12/2007, -11/+59What you say?
- rolosworld, on 10/12/2007, -8/+54"Security researchers at Symantec have discovered a new proof of concept virus that targets AMD processors rather than operating systems."
does this means the researchers are the creators?
if so, this proves anti virus companies create viruses! - xst4t1kx, on 10/12/2007, -9/+54For great justice.
- squenix1221, on 10/12/2007, -9/+54so, intel was behind this?
- Scynet, on 10/12/2007, -7/+42Mainscreen turn on.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -8/+43I know what you doing, give up every Zig!
- BlackNute, on 10/12/2007, -1/+32Note: Proof of Concept
Thats a good thing at this point because it is in the right people's hands. - nmckinlay, on 10/12/2007, -4/+35You are a shame to my initials. and my first name.
- adml_shake, on 10/12/2007, -1/+31"AMD had a chip code-named "Chernobyl" ? "
Your computer geek card has been suspended and put on probation until further review can be completed. - d0nk, on 10/12/2007, -2/+29Wow, thats great. I forgot about that joke.
For those of you not in on what benlevon said, you need to read this, http://www.adequacy.org/stories/2001.12.2.42056.2147.html (Is your Son a Computer Hacker?).
edit: wow, trogdor beat me by seconds :p - LegendarySock, on 10/12/2007, -2/+26"Popular hacker software includes "Comet Cursor", "Bonzi Buddy" and "Flash"."
greatest site ever. the "lunix" stuff too, its just so great. - adml_shake, on 10/12/2007, -8/+32or Nvidia....
- mdeltito, on 10/12/2007, -6/+28Ummm....first of all it attacks the PROCESSOR. Let that sink in. Last time i checked, processors were not OS specific. If the code was compiled in python or c, it could be run on basically anything. And OS X? Last time i checked, it was RARE to see OSX running on AMD processors (and a pain in the ass to get going, too).
- tempusrob, on 10/12/2007, -3/+25"if so, this proves anti virus companies create viruses!"
C'mon, are you really that surprised?
Security researchers taking a proactive approach to security ... who'da thunk it! It's not like the're releasing code. - hotdamn, on 10/12/2007, -7/+26Apple. Duh ;)
- TheG2, on 10/12/2007, -1/+20Proof of concept means it will be out in the wild in about 2-3 weeks...
Horrible news if it does...I realize its not the majority of the market...but still... - Splitt3rxx, on 10/12/2007, -8/+25*****.
- cyanid3, on 10/12/2007, -4/+21The virus will attack its weakpoint for massive damage!!!
- nmckinlay, on 10/12/2007, -4/+21It's going to bring down the tubes!
- titlesaysitall, on 10/12/2007, -8/+24or IBM....
- DigDugDigger, on 10/12/2007, -0/+16Anti-Virus companies lost my trust after seeing all those 'proof-of-concepts' touted around to scare Mac users into buying something they don't need. If Microsoft manages to make Vista more secure, that will spell trouble for the anti-virus companies. Maybe their new source of income will be scaring us with viruses that run below the operating system level so reguardless of how secure Microsoft makes their software you're still left with a feeling of insecurity.
- Araya213, on 10/12/2007, -9/+23Ex ATI employees.
- podgey22, on 10/12/2007, -2/+15>> Proof of concept means it will be out in the wild in about 2-3 weeks...
Days. - titlesaysitall, on 10/12/2007, -3/+15You are on the way to destruction!!
- FireJin3, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13Basically this threat is a little exaggerated. If you read the original article on top they state that it's low risk for now, and essentially if you run any kind of anti-virus soft, they'll probably update you about right now, even if the virus is on the processor level. Also AMD systems come in many "flavors", so the virus may not work on for example FX, X2, Opteron or any other systems. Also becuase it's proof-of-concept, it takes advantage of a vulnerability in the system, which means if that vulnerability can be controlled or fixed on a software level, in terms of updates, the problem is solved. Also, prrof of concept code often does not take full advantage of the vulnerability, so it's basically unfinished and ineffective in most cases. Everyone needs to relax for now and just watch out for any solutions which there definetaly may be, if there wouldn't be, these kinds of viruses would have long ago taken down the internet.
- sworoc, on 10/12/2007, -2/+14The RIAA
- ZaNkY, on 10/12/2007, -3/+14It's an old attack, but most virus writers would be too lazy to really try it. We're talking Assembly here. From what I hear, most viruses are written in Visual Basic, although not the big ("famous") ones.
I wouldn't be too afraid, but then again it only takes one virus. Additionally this may be geared to AMD, but I'm sure the virus could easily work on an Intel machine, with maybe a little tweaking, seeing as AMD's opcodes are x86 compliant, meaning that AMD proc = Intel proc essentially. 64 bit is the other way around, EM64T (intel's x86-64bit copy of AMD's AMD64) = AMD64. So maybe a little tweaking over (minor) architectural differences.
As for a patch/fix? There really isn't one, neither could you make one (as far as I know). The only solution is repair the processors, recall the ones with the vulnerabilities (that would be ALL of them), and replace with ones that aren't vulnerable. Yup, not an option. Otherwise, perhaps some antivirus signature that looks for this code before it executes could fix it.... But since this vuln can be cross OS, you would need to have an equivalent (even on linux I guess) or go with the new proc option (again, a technical option, not a practical one). - A1kmm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11This whole article is the result of a FUD press release which has been picked up by news sites and overhyped and made so inaccurate that it is hard to figure out what they are really talking about.
Firstly, nearly all viruses are written in assembler (x86 assembler will work on 32-bit Intel and AMD chips, as long as you don't use any opcodes which are processor specific). AMD64 and Itanium are not, however, compatible. So someone wrote the first ever polymorphic virus to work on AMD64, after already writing one which works on Itanium. The virus is still tied to Win64, so this isn't really anything new, just the same old things that have been happening for years on x86 ported to a new platform. See http://www.symantec.com/enterprise/security_response/weblog/2006/08/polymorphism_comes_to_the_amd6.html
for more information. - BugMeNot2, on 10/12/2007, -4/+14They talked about this on Security Now! episode 54.
http://www.grc.com/securitynow.htm - foolfromhell, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Oh crap. the whole thing was a joke. I figured it out when he started saying "lunix" permanently destroys your HDD.....
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9That wasn't 'anti-virus companies' though. Just ***** symantec.
Seriously, I'd rather put up with the viruses than install that bloated piece of crap onto any of my PCs. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10can we trust symantec on this?
- Kickboy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Even if the virus does attack the processor, there has to be some way for the virus/code to GET to the processor. Either way you slice it, the only way to do that is to first go through the OS, or through some hardware medium such as CD-ROM, Floppy, or USB. So even if a virus of this type was released on a large scale, the infection potential is extremely low. And as the article stated, it would require much intensive coding and work to get it to affect ALL processors: "But there is a big down side because different processors speak what essentially could be seen as different Operating Code (opcode) languages."
- aramova, on 10/12/2007, -7/+14Yes, please.
- themastersb, on 10/12/2007, -5/+11Hopefully there's an update to fix this vulnerability soon
- Alex.w, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7@thefinger:
You mean like how they copied AMD64 from Intel? - Quakes, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8No, that was the virus.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIH - rick2k, on 10/12/2007, -4/+10seconded
- themastersb, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9@ cyanid3
That's a very innovative attack. - TrInIdUdE, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5what next? virus written for our washing machine!
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