Cybercriminals Coming to Firmware Near You

Firmware compromises are starting to make their way into the mainstream news media and are expected to proliferate in the wild.  Oded (PrivateCore’s CEO) prognosticated in an post in early January that cybercriminals would learn from the very skilled NSA ANT technologists to manipulate firmware in their effort to make illicit profits.  Others now share that view.  

Todd Thiemann

In reading yesterday’s New York Times, I came across an article based on CrowdStrike threat research that included the quote, “As security software becomes more prolific, hackers continue to make their way down the food chain to computer hardware where it is much more difficult to identify and remove.”

The details behind security breaches take time to make their way into the news.  I expect that we will eventually read about firmware compromises in the future, but it will take some time before such breach details make their way into the media.  

While compromised hardware and firmware might be difficult to identify, that is the hard problem that PrivateCore has focused on since our founding in 2011.  New threats require new countermeasures.  Hardware and firmware attacks call for a new layer of defense, and PrivateCore provides that layer of defense.  If you are an enterprise IT security concerned about trusted computing for your servers, you should take PrivateCore vCage software for a spin.