Protecting the Hardware of the PC Part 2

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back to intermediate and point security course. And in this Listen, I'm going to continue talking about protecting the harder of the PC.

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Um, so when we talk about protecting, the harder we mean everything below the OS and we don't mean the physical hardware, we mean the softer that makes that hardware run in the PC.

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So, uh, the only real way to protect hardware off the PC meaning bios and farmers and components is by using hardware

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because every soft fermented, if you have the access of the device before the operating system boots,

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means that whatever you do in later, in no braking system, it doesn't matter. So you have to have some kind of hardware watchdog that is sitting on the mother board. So we remember this. The circles we have hardware and in the

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highest level of priority or priority than you have firmer than we have you. If I

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we have operating system and then in the end, we have application. So applications have the Lowell lowest level of priority.

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Ah, but in order to see few, if I has been compromised, you have to have some piece of harder

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that sits inside the PC

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on basically checks from independently. If something is trying to access the non volatile memory in which bios are you if I is stored

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so this piece of hardware essentially should be ableto access by us

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non volatile memory and to monitor if there is some kind of attempt to write to it.

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Ah, and also,

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if possible, this piece of hard work could be You also used the most monitor some crucial system processes, although for that it will need some kind of software component inside the OS or

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on top of always

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and again. Ideally, this piece of harder would have enough memory to store latest correct

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or

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non infected were version of bios.

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So, um,

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what would be the ideal thing is that when you boot the machine, this piece off the strip compares

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two versions of bias, and if they're different, it rewrites the

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old, the new one that is, ah, runtime bios with the Golden copy or the oldest older version

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and then restarts the machine. So there is no way that even if you can have physical access to the chip that contains bios in that case, it will simply rewrite whatever some malicious person has done.

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And as I said, these things are ideal.

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There are other ways to protect your hard lor,

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and one of these things is to have some kind of software that will simply go online

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and compare look atyour bias version and compare that bias the entire content of off you if I

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to what exists on the manufacturer's website. In that case, it can detect that bias has been tempered,

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and it if it has, you can give you a warning. And then you can menu Aly re flesh the bias off the

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off the PC with whatever software you're using,

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and then you have restored it to the latest known functioning state.

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So when we talk about hardware hardening, it means that we have established level of trust into harbor. So if we are sure that our biases okay, then we can build upon it.

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Uh, harder hardening would also allow should also allow monitoring a crucial security romantic processes in the US, for example,

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it would be nice to have some kind of trip that food monitor if the process that is defined in Windows security centers anti Melber

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has been stopped. So Ifit's stopped. You should restart it

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on. And as I said, this harder hardening wouldn't require a service call if my words detected. So I said, As I said, This is in the ideal world that these things exist on the market today, but on very few models being solved. So this is not something that is a reality, but it can be,

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um,

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obtained so it can. You can purchase a PC that has all of these things

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on, Hopefully in the future. I'm 100% sure from what I know and what I have been asking around with process and Windows that they can build something like this in the trips that as well.

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So it is possible. Technically, it's absolutely achievable. It is just a matter of policy and the awareness. So

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maybe in some near future we'll have these things built inside. The trip set off both Intel on day and the processes at least on PC's.

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So let's do ah, learning check. When we talk about hearted protection, what do we focus on the We focus on protecting former protecting hard drive or SSD, or protecting bias,

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and in this case, we're focusing primarily on protecting bias. Protecting firmer, off some harder components is also important because there are ways to, uh, influence or infest the firmer off the hardware devices.

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But in essentially, we're talking about protecting buys.