Can’t wait until this spurs the security community into doing a deep look at the roms on these cheap Chinese boards. Yeah the malware was caught - but what’s more important is the intent. This is a country that is constantly behind breaches and botnets… and here we have these PCs being marketed as router replacents and mini servers. It doesn’t take much to figure out that this is free back door territory.
but what’s more important is the intent
Afaik, the problem was a trojan inside the cracked windows images they used to avoid paying for windows keys. I doubt the intent was to create a botnet, it seems more like generic cybercrime.
I personally always wipe the preinstalled OS to avoid issues like this. However, make sure to use a clean image directly from the source. Simply reinstalling from within Windows wouldn’t have helped in this case, because the malware was part of the recovery files.
The story originated from a video from the “The Net Guy Reviews” YouTube channel. Most articles I’ve seen so far oversimplify the issue and/or get facts wrong, therefore I recommend checking out the original video if you want to learn more.
Yeah malware is everywhere - This could simply be a product of an individual actor abusing their position in a supply chain… but this also goes for hardware as well. It is certainly a more difficult vector to attack from but due to its ‘level’ it’s a valuable position to compromise.
Remember kids if you’re going to buy a Chinese pre-built, wipe that shit before use.
Remember kids if you’re going to buy a
Chinesepre-built, wipe that shit before use.Always wipe and start fresh. Yes, Chinese brands seem to be worse about security, but there’s no reason to keep bloatware and FSM only know what other crapware the OEM installed.
Or… don’t buy it to begin with.
This is why we do fresh installs on new hardware. Preferably Linux 🙂
It comes pre installed with Windows, so that’s a given isn’t it?
Yes, but this type also steals your credentials.
You’re repeating what @sugartits@lemmy.world said 😉
Kinda low effort when just a windows defender scan can detect it.
These are gonna be a good deal soon.
