Dell Shipped Server Motherboards With Spyware

[masop]

[citation][nom]halls[/nom]At least they admitted their mistake, and are making it right.[/citation]

Unlike Apple! 🙂

 

[Guest]

Generally, with RootKits and BootKits, it takes an experienced person to notice the signs or even to suspect that the system may be infected with one. You develop a feel for what you are doing and you learn what to look for in the logs of the programs you use to find and remove any Malware & such.

Because these items usually will do what ever it takes to hide themselves from being noticed and BootKits load before the Operating system itself. But there are tools out there which can be used to detect signs of RootKits.

BIOS infections can cause problems accessing the BIOS itself, it can cause video problems before Windows loads up and there are other signs too which may or may not be present depending on the variant.

Plus one of the biggest things is you get your system completely cleaned of any infections including any RootKits (not knowing of the BIOS infection), then next thing you know, shortly after your system is connected to your Broadband modem, it's infected again without your even doing anything except leaving it turned on for a few hours.

What happens is the BootKit will notice the MBR RootKit and possible Memory resident too is missing, so it'll connect online to download a new downloader module which in turn will download RootKit and any other Malware Modules which were removed.

 

[Gin Fushicho]

Seriously Dell? Do they just ship these out and when they get a complaint go "oops, my bad"?

 

[dextermat]

common answer to dodge bullet:

It doesn't come from us it's 3rd party... (google)

 

[Pyroflea]

How in god's name do you manage to do this?

 

[coldmast]

[citation][nom]Renegade_Warrior[/nom]It would be very important to check out the BIOS backup and protection features before making a purchase.[/citation]
Extremely important, you may only flash your bios once, but if that one time gets interrupted -- bye bye computer; if the motherboard doesn't feature a proper BIOS recovery mode, then your fancy laptop becomes a brick.

 

[jhansonxi]

From Digital Trends report:

“Systems running non-Windows operating systems are not vulnerable to this malware and this issue is not present on motherboards shipped new with PowerEdge systems.”

Also note that the system management firmware is the carrier, not the BIOS. Most high-end server systems have separate subsystems for updating the BIOS, checking power supply and fan status, and resetting boot passwords using a separate out-of-band connection like another network cable or even RS-232 serial ports.

 

[dEAne]

Thats not a good idea for Dell.

 

[saran008]

What a pity? Useless OEM

 

[saran008]

I hate Dell

 

[eddieroolz]

Dell's been slipping a lot recently...time for some damage control campaign, guys.

 

[aaron686]

[citation][nom]halls[/nom]At least they admitted their mistake, and are making it right.[/citation]
I see what you did there....



*cough*rottenapples*

 

[kingnoobe]

It's the customers fault for not having an AV.. DUH stupid customers..

But seriously people need to get a clue. This is only on replacement boards (which should be a big hint, but we'll see how many people can figure that one out).

Quit ragging on dell they admitted to it, they are replacing boards. Hell their doing everything right. And you damn people rag more on them then other companys that say its your fault or suck it up.

 

[Guest]

Where were these boards manufactured China? Seriously people we have to stop doing business with China. They produce sub-par equipment and there are always recalls because something is toxic or defective, or in this case riddled with spy ware.

 

[Guest]

I have setup some of these servers, they contain a flash memory chip which contains drivers needed to install the OS whether that be Windows or Linux. I'm guessing that flash memory is where the worm is, just like some cell phone vendors and flash memory resellers have been hit by these kinds of worms. Somewhere in the manufacturing processes someone adds the worm to the memory chips (either intentionally or by testing them on an infected computer). If those chips plug into an AV-less Windows system that has autoplay turned on the virus loads itself into the system. This can and has happened to other vendors, Olympus shipped cameras with a worm, IBM shipped flash drives with a worm, I can't remember which cell phone vendor it was but I remember reading about a cell phone shipping with a worm recently. This is a manufacturer issue not a vendor issue. However the vendors that are affected by these issues should put pressure on the manufacturers.

Now as for Dell's customer service, my experience with Dell Enterprise has been very good, they have sent me proactive replacement parts when they find out some piece of a system has a higher failure rate than average. My experience with Dell Home and Small Business has not been as good.

 

[HappyBB]

How did the spybot worm got into those replacement parts? It seems to me that news like this doesn't cover how the crime took place at first.

 

[hardcore_gamer]

I'm confused