As users become more and more aware of security issues, most computers now have anti-virus software installed, and Windows also provides its own Microsoft Defender protection. In order to bypass this detection, hackers have begun to use their brains to other hardware. Recently, it has been reported abroad that hackers have developed new graphics card virus technology and successfully implanted malicious programs into mainstream graphics cards from AMD, NVIDIA, and Intel, and sold them on hacker forums.
(Image source: NVIDIA)
New graphics card virus emerges, implanting malicious programs into VRAM
According to the discovery of foreign media Bleeping Computer, a post appeared on a foreign hacker forum claiming that their technology can ensure that malicious programs will not be detected by anti-virus software. The method is to implant the malicious programs into the VRAM memory of the graphics card and execute it directly in it:
The text also states that this technology is currently designed to support Windows system environments above OpenCL 2.0. They have also successfully tested it on Intel UHD 620/630, AMD Radeon RX 5700, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 740M and GTX 1650 mainstream graphics cards. This also means that not only independent graphics cards, this technology can also be implanted into the internal display of the processor.
For this reason, VX-Underground, which claims to have the most virus source codes, samples and reports on the Internet, announced a few days ago that they have noticed it and will conduct relevant demonstrations in the future:
Recently an unknown individual sold a malware technique to a group of Threat Actors.
This malcode allowed binaries to be executed by the GPU, and in GPU memory address space, rather the CPUs.
We will demonstrate this technique soon.
— vx-underground (@vxunderground) August 29, 2021
This post appeared on August 8, and about 2 weeks later, on August 25, the seller responded that it had been sold, but did not disclose any transaction details. This also means that the new graphics card virus may have quietly begun to spread on the Internet. As for what will happen if you are hit, it is still unclear. It also depends on what kind of malicious program the hacker implanted.
In any case, for those who are worried, especially the graphics card models mentioned above, you can try to open the job manager when the computer is not running any work, and check the GPU usage in the performance menu. If the usage is very high, it means that you may be infected:
Source: KOCPC Chinese