Hacking Convesation in the pub has now led to a £50 bet.

[julwalsh]

Hi all

My mates and I were having a chat about computers in the pub, when one of them piped up that it was possible to hack into your PC while it is turned off. I say it's not possible. Here's the conversation:

Me: "It's not possible"

Mate "Yes it is, all the hacker has to do is to get the PC to turn on remotely"

Me "Yes, if it is turned on, I suppose Hackers could probably do anything these days, but not whilst the machine is off"

Mate "Yes, all he has to do is to tell the modem or LAN to wake up the computer (via the BIOS). Then he has access to your machine"

Me "Yes but surely, you would already have to have the BIOS set to wake up for LAN or Modem"

Mate "No, the hacker will wait until you rmachine is switched on by you. Then he gains access to your BIOS via the Live update facility. When he is in the BIOS, he changes the LAN or Modem wake up feature to 'ON'. Then when your machine is turned off at night, he justs sends a command to the LAN or Modem to wake up the PC"

Me "and how would he hack the BIOS while you are using the PC without you noticing?"

We went on arguing for hours, and decided on a £50 bet. I say it's NOT possible to do all this. while I realise that Hackers are becoming far more sophisticated, this seems a little bit far fetched.

What do you guys think?

[104456]

Off the top of my head the bios state would needed to be changed to get the WOL enabled which would mean updating the bios.To do it through the live update [if it were feesable and if the board supported it or even had it installed] would require this program to be initiated also.
Even after this with the WOL initiated and say the hacker got the system to boot they would still need to gain entry and enable remote access to files.
Theres a lot of ifs to this story and not much substance much like stating that man has landed on the moon and someday soon I will too.

[Teknophobia]

Well, AFAIK, most Dell PCs for example (cheap end) have the WOL feature removed from their BIOS. The hacker will also need to have already compromised the PC to facilitate changing the BIOS (via the @BIOS live update). You would also have to be using a modem and not a router, otherwise you would not be able to send the magic packets through to port 9 (or whatever port it is set to).

So I would venture it is possible, but in very unlikely circumstance.

TEk

[Train]

Yes they can break through the modem. I have had that happen many a time but the firewall always stopped them. Where the old software firewall comes in handy.

But it would take more than the average cracker to do what is listed. And do not forget the old BIOS virus that are still floating out there.

Why do you think they put the BIOS update protecting in setup. To stop them.

[104456]

@Some motherboards have bios backup and bios locking jumpers which would also prevent such happening.

[Teknophobia]

I guess you've just lost £50. Bummer, Friday night and all.

TEk

[104456]

Proof of concept is not by definition an actual threat.Id call it a draw

[julwalsh]

I'm not accepting a draw. I'm going all out for a win, lol. After reading what you guys have said, it's obvious that this is nigh on impossible. I guess it's like me saying I could beat the world heavyweight champion at boxing. Impossible, no, but possible, no.

Cheers guys. I'm off to pick up my £50