"The hardware will be able to infect the computer over and over," lead Kaspersky researcher Costin Raiu said. The firmware operates all the time as long as the drive is powered on, and is usually outside the control of the operation system itself.ĭisk drive firmware is viewed by spies and cybersecurity experts as the second-most valuable real estate on a PC for a hacker, second only to the BIOS code invoked automatically as a computer boots up. The exposure of these new spying tools could lead to greater backlash against Western technology, particularly in countries such as China, which is already drafting regulations that would require most bank technology suppliers to proffer copies of their software code for inspection.Īccording to Kaspersky, the spies made a technological breakthrough by figuring out how to infect the persistently stored firmware in hard drives that control their operations with malicious software.
Snowden's revelations have hurt the United States' relations with some allies and slowed the sales of US technology products abroad. The disclosure could further hurt the NSA's surveillance abilities, already damaged by massive leaks by former contractor Edward Snowden. Kaspersky today published the technical details of its research in an effort to help infected institutions detect the spying programs, some of which trace back as far as 2001. The NSA is the agency responsible for gathering electronic intelligence on behalf of the United States.Ī former NSA employee said Kaspersky's analysis was correct, and that people still in the intelligence agency valued these spying programs as highly as Stuxnet.Īnother former intelligence operative confirmed that the NSA had developed the prized technique of concealing spyware in hard drives, but said he did not know which spy efforts relied on it. The firm declined to publicly name the country behind the spying campaign, but said it was closely linked to Stuxnet, the NSA-led cyberweapon that was used to attack Iran's uranium enrichment facility. The targets included government and military institutions, telecommunication companies, banks, energy companies, nuclear researchers, media, and Islamic activists, Kaspersky said.
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