Firmware Corruption
Where this stands
A Sigma rule exists for this technique in the corpus.
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When a detection for this fires
Destructive impactSomething moved to destroy, encrypt or disable. The only family where speed genuinely beats certainty.What the technique is
Adversaries may overwrite or corrupt the flash memory contents of system BIOS or other firmware in devices attached to a system in order to render them inoperable or unable to boot, thus denying the availability to use the devices and/or the system. Firmware is software that is loaded and executed from non-volatile memory on hardware devices in order to initialize and manage device functionality. These devices may include the motherboard, hard drive, or video cards. In general, adversaries may manipulate, overwrite, or corrupt firmware in order to deny the use of the system or devices. For example, corruption of firmware responsible for loading the operating system for network devices may render the network devices inoperable. Depending on the device, this attack may also result in Data Destruction.
Read it on attack.mitre.orgWhat MITRE says you would watch
- AN0474
Firmware flash utility invoked with elevated privileges followed by raw access to firmware device path or changes to boot configuration.
- AN0475
Direct write access to /dev/mem or /sys/firmware combined with usage of firmware flashing utilities (e.g., flashrom).
- AN0476
EFI updates executed via system processes or binaries outside of expected patch windows or using unsigned firmware packages.
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