Analysis of the damage caused by malicious software to server hardware

Malware can cause damage to our server hardware by using several simple methods such as:

Overclocking: Game enthusiasts tend to overclocking their hardware to improve performance, but they know that the overclocking system requires a powerful and efficient cooling system to take away the excess heat generated by overclocking. Overclocking with malicious software or tampering with BIOS information does not have an additional cooling system, which is followed by permanent CPU and memory damage. And in this case, even if we replace the damaged hardware components, the same problem will soon reappear.

Overpressure: Overclocking and overpressure are a pair of good base friends. By increasing the power supply voltage on the motherboard, a component on it is easily "hung up", and it all happens in a flash. Small overpressure will lead to a slight increase in the calorific value of the components, resulting in the so-called electrical migration phenomenon. Over time, this can cause CPU pins or memory modules to become corrupted and eventually make the system a machine. As with overclocking, the replacement of faulty components is also a symptom not the root cause, old habits will inevitably relapse.

Overuse (mechanical angle): the wear and overheating of machine parts in use is gradually deepened, and hard drives can be damaged by excessive read-write operations or head stops. For example, the following directives:
While true; Do DD if=/dev/xxx of=/dev/xxx conv=notrunc; Done

Create an infinite loop of disk read and write requests that will cause the server's hard drive to overheat quickly and immediately fail:
Hdparm-s 1/dev/xxx while true; Sleep 60; DD If=/dev/random Of=foobar count=1; Done

The above code will cause the hard drive to slow down, wait a minute, start, write random information, then lower the speed again, and so on. "Very soon, the hard drive will start to emit a different sound, and the effect of the attack will follow," Kotler said.

Overuse (electronic angle): There is no moving parts inside the flash memory, but it can be artificially caused by continuous write failure. To achieve this, simply follow this line of code:
DD If=/dev/urandom of=/dev/xxx

Once a failure occurs, flash memory cannot continue to store information normally. While it appears that this is just a loss of a USB flash drive, this kind of phenomenon is likely to have more serious consequences. For example, the trouble is the flash memory in the router, then it can not continue to store log files or receive updates, we can only choose to replace the device.

Over-cycle: the continuous power cycle is a very basic attack on the system, but it can be a very interesting result, Kotler said. This is because when the system is turned on, the temperature will rise, the temperature will decrease, and when the temperature is at an inflection point and the voltage is peak, it will cause damage to any unpredictable parts of the system.

Many businesses around the world face the threat of a large and small denial of service (DDoS) attack and a huge amount of blackmail. "hacktivist", like other organizations that use DDoS attacks to retaliate, insists that their actions are reasonable.

As the enterprise in addition to the timely upgrading of the signature firmware update, there is little specific program can be used to learn to deal with PDOs attacks, so Kotler said he believes that PDOs attack will eventually become a new tool for hackers, and all this should be only a matter of time.