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.
this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2024
118 points (98.4% liked)
Technology
34436 readers
192 users here now
This is the official technology community of Lemmy.ml for all news related to creation and use of technology, and to facilitate civil, meaningful discussion around it.
Ask in DM before posting product reviews or ads. All such posts otherwise are subject to removal.
Rules:
1: All Lemmy rules apply
2: Do not post low effort posts
3: NEVER post naziped*gore stuff
4: Always post article URLs or their archived version URLs as sources, NOT screenshots. Help the blind users.
5: personal rants of Big Tech CEOs like Elon Musk are unwelcome (does not include posts about their companies affecting wide range of people)
6: no advertisement posts unless verified as legitimate and non-exploitative/non-consumerist
7: crypto related posts, unless essential, are disallowed
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
Yes! I've been telling this to friends who keep buying Chinese boards to use as routers and NAS ... wth
I mean depending on what board you’re using it’s unlikely it’s hardware level snooping that supersedes changing the firmware. Especially if you stick to those that run on open source firmware.
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.
It comes pre installed with Windows, so that's a given isn't it?
Yes, but this type also steals your credentials.
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 ~~Chinese~~ pre-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.
Yup, I don't trust it to not install a rootkit on the BIOS or something. Buy from reputable companies, and if you get a prebuilt PC, you'll probably want to reinstall Windows to get all of the adware off. If you don't use Windows, you're probably fine with just buying from a reputable vendor.
That's what I'm always most paranoid about - buying storage and having some bad actor insert malicious code through unusual means.
Yup, it's not worth saving $20 or whatever to buy a sketchy brand, just buy a well known brand with an image to uphold and you'll be fine.
Kinda low effort when just a windows defender scan can detect it.
This is why we do fresh installs on new hardware. Preferably Linux 🙂
Unfortunetaly, that does close to nothing when the issue is spyware on firmware
According to this Tom’s Hardware article (https://www.tomshardware.com/desktops/mini-pcs/mini-pc-maker-ships-systems-with-factory-installed-spyware-acemagic-says-issue-was-contained-to-the-first-shipment) it isn’t firmware based spyware but just existing on the machine drive.
They were also found on the restore partition so a full wipe and fresh install would eliminate the issue. AceMagic have also claimed that the issue was isolated to the first round of shipments.
It’s reasonable to consider whether to trust a company that shipped spyware in the first place. I would have a hard time with that.
Better stop using any modern cellphone ever then.
Trying to, but credible alternatives just don't exist. I really want a Linux phone, but battery life and basic features just aren't there.
It’s more than likely they “borrowed” some other Chinese company’s cloned Windows drive and used it for their install rather than roll their own. Could be they were malicious but coming out and claiming it was an error so quickly doesn’t really push that narrative hard.
We’re going to agree to disagree about that. Being caught red-handed would trigger an immediate mea culpa if they want to preserve plausible deniability and try again later.
If they weren’t the original malicious actor, then their quality control sucks. Either way, they shipped a booby-trapped system. Trusting them again will be hard for a lot of people.
This article says the same thing, but it’s worth people being aware that firmware is a vector.
Yes but that's not the issue
How do you know? They find spyware not in firmware, but that doesn't cover what they didn't find.
Because the issue is what they did find. If they hadn't found it there would be no article.
Sure. I'm just saying that if a company is caught putting spyware into their products, I'm not going to trust them to suddenly fix it. If they cared, they should've caught this with internal QA.
So either they're negligent or malicious. If the former, they'll probably be negligent again. If the latter, they'll be more sneaky next time. Either way I don't trust them.
I understand. I'm just not sure why you're replying to me with this.
My point is that we know there's spyware on the image, so we should suspect malware elsewhere as well. Until the hardware is audited, we should assume that hardware is compromised as well.
Nothing in this article said anything about the device firmware being compromised
I didn't say that
Unfortunetaly, that does close to nothing when the issue is spyware on firmware
Hopefully it’s not built into a rom chip on any number of custom components in these mini PCs making it software independent.
These are gonna be a good deal soon.
If anyone is willing to buy them.
I mean, technically, you can always use hardware, even if it's been bombed to shit with malware. Just never connect it to any sort of network, never transfer files from that PC with bidirectional channels and never use that PC's hardware anywhere else.
LOL! Fair point
Thats why they’ll be a good deal.
The hardware is the same as several other brands, and none of them have come up bad. Ultimately it really does look like someone either got got on the image they cloned from or maliciously inserted windows spyware into it. Either way it’s nothing a flatten and reinstall won’t fix.
Hell, if the windows keys are legit you don’t even need to use the oem reinstall media.
Maybe we should have a working Linux live USB before we buy a new laptop so that we can set it up without connecting it to the home router.
Does not help when the spyware is embedded in the firmware.
Which, I would expect, happens to most of these shitty pcs from no-name Chinese brands.
Probably not most, but it's still a risk that's not worth taking. I'd rather buy from a company with brand image to uphold.
I am not saying that the image is to be trusted, but "Win32/Wacatac.B!ml" is just a generic name for anything obfuscated by vmprotect. Most cracks are detected as "Win32/Wacatac.B!ml"
Also, because it's detected by microsoft defender itself, if they really had a malicious intent, they would have whitelisted those executables in the disk image.
The vendor itself acknowledged the situation by saying that the virus problem was solved!