The Ultimate Backdoor: Hackers Can Infect Your Processor

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A group of researchers from University of Illinois managed to hack into a computer processor then gain full control over the attacked system. It seems to be very difficult setting that kind of backdoor, but once completed it is completely invisible for users and for antivirus softwares.

According to an assistant proffesor in the university’s computer science department, this is the ultimate backdoor exploit, working extremely efficient.

The team demonstrated the atack using a LEON processor running on a Linux OS. They had only to send a network packet to the computer that would trigger the firmware rewrite.After the rewrite is complete, the attacker can log on to the system.

It is 100% efficient, but to succed, hackers have to install a malicious CPU into the target computer, and that’s a hard job.