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Cory Doctorow

So it's a big deal that Kaspersky has detected a UEFI-infecting rootkit (which they've dubbed a "bootkit"), which they call Cosmicstrand, which can reinstall itself after your reformat your drive and reinstall your OS:

securelist.com/cosmicstrand-ue

Cosmicstrand does some *really* clever, technical things to compromise your UEFI, which then allows it to act with near-total impunity and undetectability. Indeed, Kaspersky warns that there are probably *lots* of these bootkits floating around.

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28 Jul 2022 at 16:46 | Open on mamot.fr
6 comments
Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

If you want a good lay-oriented breakdown of how Cosmicstrand installs a wicked God in your computer, check out Dan Goodin's excellent *Ars Technica* writeup:

arstechnica.com/information-te

Cosmicstrand dates back at least to 2016, a year after we learned about the NSA's BIOS attacks, thanks to the Snowden docs:

wired.com/2015/03/researchers-

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If you want a good lay-oriented breakdown of how Cosmicstrand installs a wicked God in your computer, check out Dan Goodin's excellent *Ars Technica* writeup:

arstechnica.com/information-te

Cosmicstrand dates back at least to 2016, a year after we learned about the NSA's BIOS attacks, thanks to the Snowden docs:

28 Jul 2022 at 16:46 | Open on mamot.fr
Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

But despite its long tenure, Cosmicstrand was only just discovered. That's because of the fundamental flaw inherent in designing a computer that its owners can't fully inspect or alter: if you design a component that is supposed to be immune from owner override, then anyone who compromises that component *can't be detected or countered by the computer's owner*.

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28 Jul 2022 at 16:46 | Open on mamot.fr
Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

This is the core of a two-decade-old debate among security people, and it's one that the "benevolent God" faction has consistently had the upper hand in. They're the "curated computing" advocates who insist that preventing you from choosing an alternative app store or side-loading a program is for your own good - because if it's possible for you to override the manufacturer's wishes, then malicious software may impersonate you to do so, or you might be tricked into doing so.

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28 Jul 2022 at 16:46 | Open on mamot.fr
Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

This benevolent dictatorship model only works so long as the dictator is both perfectly benevolent and perfectly competent. We know the dictators aren't always benevolent. Apple won't invade your privacy to sell you things, but they'll take away ever Chinese user's privacy to retain their ability to manufacture devices in China:

nytimes.com/2021/05/17/technol

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28 Jul 2022 at 16:46 | Open on mamot.fr
Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

But even if you trust a dictator's benevolence, you can't trust in their perfection. Everyone makes mistakes. Benevolent dictator computing works well, but fails badly. Designing a computer that intentionally can't be fully controlled by its owner is a nightmare, because that is a computer that, once compromised, can attack its owner with impunity.

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Image:
Cryteria (modified)
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fil

CC BY 3.0:
creativecommons.org/licenses/b

eof/

But even if you trust a dictator's benevolence, you can't trust in their perfection. Everyone makes mistakes. Benevolent dictator computing works well, but fails badly. Designing a computer that intentionally can't be fully controlled by its owner is a nightmare, because that is a computer that, once compromised, can attack its owner with impunity.

28 Jul 2022 at 16:46 | Open on mamot.fr
marnanel replied to Cory

@pluralistic do you know the Mitchell and Webb sketch about the computer Colosson whose improbable emergency shutdown trigger is seeing a human holding up a photo of a duck?

28 Jul 2022 at 18:24 | Open on queer.party
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