Cybersecurity researchers at ESET have unveiled what they claim to be the first-ever UEFI rootkit being used in the wild, allowing hackers to implant persistent malware on the targeted computers that could survive a complete hard-drive wipe.
Dubbed LoJax, the UEFI rootkit is part of a malware campaign conducted by the infamous Sednit group, also known as APT28, Fancy Bear, Strontium, and Sofacy, to target several government organizations in the Balkans as well as in Central and Eastern Europe.
Operating since at least 2007, Sednit group is a state-sponsored hacking group believed to be a unit of GRU (General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate), a Russian secret military intelligence agency. The hacking group has been associated with a number of high profile attacks, including the DNC hack just before the U.S. 2016 presidential election.
UEFI, or Unified Extensible Firmware Interface, a replacement for the traditional BIOS, is a core and critical firmware component of a computer, which links a computer’s hardware and operating system at startup and is typically not accessible to users.
How Does LoJax UEFI Rootkit Work?
According to the ESET researchers, the LoJax malware has the ability to write a malicious UEFI module into the system’s SPI flash memory, allowing BIOS firmware to install and execute malware deep inside the computer disk during the boot process.
“This patching tool uses different techniques either to abuse misconfigured platforms or to bypass platform SPI flash memory write protections,” ESET researchers said in a blog post published today.