Security Basics mailing list archives
Any solution for a virus in the BIOS?
From: "Dev Null" <devj.nullj () gmail com>
Date: Sat, 17 Nov 2007 15:57:10 +0000
Hello ALL I have come across a computer system with some strange behaviour. Keyboard of the system gives intermittent problem. Whenever the system is booted, the three light [NUM, CAPS, SCROLL] of the keyboard flash and it gets detected [the OS does not give two beeps]. However, immediately afterwards it does not work. The three LEDs go off and do not turn on again. Keyboard seems to be dead. Only sometimes, it starts working completely. I took the keyboard off of the serial port it is connected to and plugged it into a USB-to-serial port converter [connected to the USB port on the computer] which is known to work alright. Keyboard gives the same problem again. This behaviour was tested with various functional keyboards. Obviously it is not the serial port which is a problem nor is the hardware circuitry. The USB port works fine with other devices, so again it is not the circuitry again. It is the BIOS? I wanted to update the BIOS over the net. However, I cannot go into the CMOS setup so as to switch the system into normal booting rather than intel rapid boot so that I can see the BIOS version as the keyboard does not work. Also the windows does not boot any longer on this system so that I could get this information from the "System Information". I tried to boot the system with knoppix, but again it is not of help as the keyboard does not work. It just works only sparingly. May be once or twice in twenty or so attempts. For a clue, the system is infected with a virus which creates an exe file in folders. Exe file is created with the name of the folder in which it is created. So, an infected folder FOLDER will have an exe file FOLDER.exe. Is this something which has infected BIOS? If so, what should I do so that a keyboard starts working with the system and I can perform the BIOS update and perform other maintenance tasks. Thanks for any help. -- devj
Current thread:
- Any solution for a virus in the BIOS? Dev Null (Nov 19)
- <Possible follow-ups>
- Re: Any solution for a virus in the BIOS? evilwon12 (Nov 19)