Intel left a fascinating security flaw

in its chips for 16 years – here's how

to exploit it

Howler opens door for SMM rootkits

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Black Hat In-Depth A design flaw in Intel's processors can be exploited to install malware beneath operating systems and antivirus – making it tough to detect and remove.

"It's a forgotten patch to a forgotten problem, but opens up an incredible vulnerability," said Christopher Domas, a security researcher with the Battelle Memorial Institute, who revealed the hardware bug at the Black Hat conference in Vegas last week.

The blunder was introduced in 1995, in the Pentium Pro. It is hardwired into the silicon, and has been staring kernel-level programmers in the face for years.

It allows smart hackers to run rootkit code at the very lowest level on the computer, out of reach of the operating system, its applications, and even the hypervisor. This means the rootkit can, among other things, silently monitor and record the user's every keypress, mouse click, and download.

Efforts to detect the rootkit and eradicate it from a computer can be blocked, or hampered, by the malware itself. A nightmare, in other words...