CosmicStrand Malware Found In ASUS, Gigabyte Motherboards
Security researchers at antivirus-maker Kaspersky have discovered a new UEFI firmware rootkit dubbed CosmicStrand that has been infecting systems featuring Asus and Gigabyte motherboards. For the unversed, UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) firmware is tasked with booting up Windows computers, including the loading of the operating system, even before any security measures of the system. As a result, malware that has been placed in the UEFI firmware image is particularly hard to detect which makes it difficult to remove it by performing a clean reinstall of the operating system or even by replacing the storage drive....