Hackers learn to threaten computer hardware

AS IF computer viruses and worms arent enough of a nuisance, malicious hardware, which will be much more difficult to detect, could soon become a threat too.

Today, computer viruses, which are programs downloaded either as an email attachment or when someone visits a website, are responsible for most computer attacks. Hackers use them to gain control of a computer so that they can press-gang it into sending spam or downloading more malicious software, such as a keystroke logger, which can record credit card details and passwords typed in by the user.

Anti-virus (AV) software monitors a computer for signs of a virus, such as chunks of telltale code. To fight back, hackers write new viruses that use different code, or bury the code deeper in the operating system where the AV software isnt programmed to look. So AV firms and hackers are locked in an arms race, continually trying to outdo each other.

Soon hackers could up the ante even further. Samuel King and his colleagues at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have shown that they could also gain control of a computer by adding malicious circuits to its processor. Because these circuits interfere with the computer at a deeper level than a virus, they effectively operate below the radar of AV software.........