by Playfuls Staff |
8th December 2005
The issue of rootkit has been around for quite some time, but not too many people knew about it before the XCP-Sony scandal. There are certain programs that can take care of this problem, but what if you didn’t have to bother with installing new software? What if your hardware did the rootkit detection job automatically?[more]
This seems to be the idea behind Intel’s latest initiative. Thus, according to the IDG News Service, during an open house for press, analysts, etc., held by the company in Folsom, the chip manufacturer has presented, amongst other projects, that of a small chip that should be placed on a PC's motherboard to monitor programs constantly for modifications that might be the result of a malicious attack.
Sony's XCP software used rootkit software to implement copy protection policies. Rootkits are pieces of software designed to access a system and make changes or implement policies without being detected by the computer's operating system or antivirus software
The Intel project seeks to protect systems from malicious programs that make their way onto a system and attack application software running in the system's memory. The succinctly named "OS Independent Run-Time System Integrity Services" project focuses on limiting memory-resident attacks by detecting changes in application code as they happen, enabling IT administrators to take immediate action, said Travis Schluessler, a researcher with Intel.
Under this scenario, an "integrity measurement manager" running on a chip outside the main CPU or memory would identify a rootkit or malware that started to make changes to the program in memory.
Even though, according to the company, this is just a project, and it will probably be implemented around 2008 or 2009, its potential is extraordinary, especially for the users. Imagine an on-board, hardware security product, which no external malicious program can tamper with. It would be the ultimate defense system against e-aggressions, and I really hope that Intel will carry on it’s development.
