Such attacks occur before the operating system (OS) loads, targeting the
system BIOS and Master Boot Record (MBR), and can persistently infect higher-level system functions including operating systems and applications.
These enhancements, together with a rapidly expanding list of resellers and strategic infrastructure partners are making virtualization far easier and more affordable for customers of all sizes."Server virtualization technology is tracking to be equally as ubiquitous as the
system BIOS (Basic Input/Output System), with embedded hypervisors being an assumed server component in coming years," said Chris Wolf, senior analyst, Burton Group.
Programmed into the on-board flash is the
system BIOS which enables portable applications and system operation via the Compact Flash Module.
"The diagnostic screen said that it was a hard disk failure and indicated that some settings were reset in the
system BIOS. Instead of a disk array, we had three independent disks, which is a pretty scary picture.
In any standard PCI plug-in card, bus initialization cannot be slowed because it is controlled by the
system BIOS. In these cases, SRAM-based FPGA loading latency introduces the very serious risk of card inoperability.
SST's SuperFlash-based, LPC flash memory products are used to store
system BIOS and embedded OS/application software.
This allows designers to fit the
system BIOS and video BIOS firmware in a smaller density memory array than those of typical flash memory devices without the SoftPartition capability.
