Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2008 19:45:51 -0500 From: Jeffrey Goldberg <jeffrey@goldmark.org> To: dfeustel@mindspring.com Cc: FreeBSD List <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: FreeBSD and User Security Message-ID: <DB7E0B8F-F956-4F1D-867F-C1889CCEDAF1@goldmark.org> In-Reply-To: <20080612001713.D1B718FC1B@mx1.freebsd.org> References: <20080612001713.D1B718FC1B@mx1.freebsd.org>
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On Jun 11, 2008, at 7:17 PM, dfeustel@mindspring.com wrote: > A relatively new security threat known as 'The Blue Pill', based upon > hardware, is a class of virtual rootkits that can silently take over > Intel and AMD systems. A good site to visit to learn about these > virtual > rootkits is http://invisiblethings.org/index.html. That is simple (in concept) yet absolutely brilliant! I'm sure that people much smarter that I am have thought about these things more carefully than I have, but I'm not convinced that a blue pill would be completely undetectable. First it should consume memory. A very complete test of memory through a modified memtest should be able to detect whether system reported memory is accurate. Secondly, a blue pill would need to be reinserted after a hard reboot. Therefore a look at the boot process (of a non-live system) should be able to see whether there is something that reinserts the blue pill. But even if detection is possible these ways, a Blue Pill would be extremely difficult to detect once inserted, and so the focus would have to be entirely on prevention. Again, these are just my first thoughts after looking at this very briefly. The people who come up with this stuff and do proper analysis are both smarter and more knowledgeable than I am. Cheers, -j -- Jeffrey Goldberg http://www.goldmark.org/jeff/
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