Cybercriminals selling malicious tech that can hide malware in GPUs

Thanks to the Covid-19 outbreak, Work From Home (WFH) and e-learning have become the new normal. There are more people online than ever before. This apparently attracts cybercriminals, who thrive on preying on naive users to steal their personal and financial details.

Taking note of the threats, technology companies such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Intel, AMD, Nvidia and others have improved the security to thwart the spread of malware on their respective platforms and hardware.

However, bad actors are not sitting back and are busy improving their craft. In the latest instance, they have come with an intelligently designed malware for GPU that can conceal its presence from anti-malware software in the computer systems.

And, they are selling the malicious tech with Proof-of-Concept (PoC) to potential buyers on hacker forums, reported Bleeping Computer.

As per the advertisement, it can infect most of the Windows PC with Intel (UHD 620/630), AMD Radeon (RX 5700), and Nvidia's GeForce (GTX 740M, GTX 1650) GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) chipsets.

It has to be noted that the malware infecting GPUs is very new in the industry. Usually, threat actors target CPUs(Central Processing Units) and RAM (Radom Access Memory) to execute malicious codes.

However, in 2013, the Institute of Computer Science - Foundation for Research and Technology (FORTH) in Greece and at Columbia University in New York had demoed some experiments targeting GPUs and they were able to capture keystrokes.

This would allow hackers to read patterns of user IDs and passwords and take over the computer. But, the concept was technically complicated and assumed it won't find traction among threat actors.

But, recent development suggests, bad actors seem to have mastered it. With such advanced concealing techniques, it will be hard to tackle hackers taking over people's PC.

It is up to the silicon companies to put more effort into designing well-secured GPUs, and other types of computer chipsets to safeguard against such malicious codes.

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