WORST computer virus in HISTORY?

If you haven't heard about this virus yet, you will soon. It's called LoJax and although it hasn't hit the mainstream yet, it's effects can be absolutely devastating. Let's do a deep dive into how this virus works, replicates and destroys your computer's motherboard, hard drives and other peripherals.

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[KillerBill]

I still think the worst virus ever is Windows. It stops you doing what you want to do, it expands to fill your hard drive and it hogs resources. On top of that you have to pay to use it. Anybody who isn't already following your suggested best practices deserves what they get.

[OctavioGaitan]

OK now I am EXTREMELY scared about this!
Even when I have followed all the steps in this video, I as a faithful computer user for over 15 years, am still scared about getting infected with LoJax on any of my computers.

[D.von.N]

Sounds similar to the Chernobyl virus from 1990s. My husband's computer was infected with it, they had to redo the core of his pc.

[DJaquithFL]

Yep. While I have good practices, I wonder if motherboards with dual BIOS can get around this if infected? By that I mean if the primary BIOS is infected, switching to the secondary would isolate the infection. Alternatively you'd either have to desolder or otherwise replace the BIOS chip.

Personally, ransomware scares me more than LoJax right now. The problem is there's a lot of different components on a motherboard that have programmable firmware and you could be stuck in a whackamole situation.

[RawDepth]

It sounds like the BIOS manufacturers have the power to fix this. They could simply create an update that writes zeros to those empty spots in the BIOS chip, thus overwriting the virus code. Or before you get the virus, couldn't they somehow mark those empty spots as being reserved or unavailable?

[JoskMclaren]

Given how infrequently if ever nost users edit/update their bios, they should make it non-rewritable without plugging in a jack or some such thing.

[raymooreaz]

Great video. However Windows Defender truly is better than most of those "free" AVs out there. You might even want to consider making a video on this topic. Keep up the great work.

[cableapostle]

I have an X-99 Deluxe 3.1 Motherboard... There is a setting on that motherboard's firmware that can write protect the input output storage to prevent programs from just writing into this circuit. I'm going to turn this setting on, going forward. The firmware has not been anything new since 2017. There is no real reason for me to continue to allow any writing into the input output components. I do have a flashback feature on my motherboard that will allow me to recover the firmware to my system. This motherboard has its own USB interface, that is dedicated to being used as recovery. That's pretty ingenious. Many bios' chip today is EEPROM, which may not need to clear everything, prior to reflashing the IO component.

[aywitb]

It would make sense to have an offline network and use a live cd to access the internet etc. Once the live cd is shut down its all gone and I dont think it writes to the drive. You can still save info to a drive and use it offline while your regular pc is only on an offline network.

[sammykins]

I was having no bootable device found issue. Tried changing the boot order. The BIOS is updated to the most current version. Followed your Windows 10 video and reinstalled a clean Windows. I've had malwarebytes for forever and avast. Just started having the boot issue after my computer was running really hot and shutting down. A good dusting stop the overhearting but that's when i got the boot error. I'm concerned I may have picked up this thing. As I've never had issues like this before. And i have an additional laptop that is about five years old that works fine

[DavidM]

I've been spending some time learning to create and deploy virtual machines on my NAS. Right now, I have a Windows 11 VM up and running and it's pretty much indistinguishable from using a normal PC installation. Would using a VM provide any level of protection against something like LoJax ?

[lurkerrekrul]

Want to know the perfect analogy for the entire computer ecosystem? "I removed my front door for convenience, now I need to figure out some kind of security system to prevent burglars from coming into my home."

Security is always an afterthought with computer hardware and software makers. The whole problem with viruses infecting or corrupting the BIOS could have been 99% eliminated if computer manufacturers had put even a little thought into security. How? First, put a write-enable jumper on the motherboard. For the BIOS to be written to or updated, this jumper has to be physically in place because without it, writing to the BIOS chip is physically impossible. And to prevent people from just leaving the jumper in place, the computer won't boot unless it's removed. Secondly, put a copy of the BIOS in ROM and add a second jumper that when present at boot, will cause the ROM copy of the BIOS to be flashed onto the BIOS chip, blank areas and all. Sure, it may be an older version than the user had at the time, but it will be a CLEAN copy.

These two measures would virtually eliminate the possibility of the BIOS being hijacked, or of a virus hiding in the chip. Simple and effective, and yet none of the geniuses designing this stuff has thought of this?

[jdmayfield]

That's... not why UEFI was created.

[FuzeTheWholeTeam]

wonderful video. keep up the good work

[Cyanwasserstoff]

Can this virus also infect core boot running motherboards (instead of UEFI)?

[jdmayfield]

Secure Boot does not protect the firmware. It only verifies the Operating System on the boot drive.

[leewright]

maybe lift write pin on bios, or secondary protection on write side of bios plus lojax been about around 4 years,

[MiguelDeMarchena]

I am working with computers since 2005 and electronics since 1990, I have seen a lot of viruses, i have never again used antivirus on my computers after windows 7 and now I have over 10 years using Linux where no installer can be launched without Super User DO authentication. BIOS brick What's that? with a heat gun and flux remove the BIOS chip from the board, flash the chip with the ROM provided by the motherboard manufacturers page using Arduino or a Raspberry pi and the right software and solder it back or pay to someone to do it.

[moonlightsoldier]

Yea on my windows pc i only have windows defender reasons in the past when the subscriptions to the anti virus software ran out turned into a virus of its own to the point where my laptop was put in a boot loop untill i could quickly uninstall it before task manager could load it problem fixed otherwise would of just changed os but thats before i knew i could many years ago qnd the promblem with anti virus also is it looks for known signatures if you modefy the code of the malware you can make it fud pretty easily or make your own secound they could possibly look for behaviors which thats a grey area which could be more of a gead ache then its worth though i also dont keep anything of value on any of my computers so i can wipe them on the fly anything useful or personal stsys on cold storage aka an external harddrive

[SaltAndPepper.U]

Why doesn't the BIOS gets recovered from the backup BIOS recovery ROM chip (I assume there is one as BIOS is so important at hardware level), into secondary BIOS chip bit by bit? Isn't it like copy paste everything (filled or empty spaces)?