Extreme Privilege Surveillance

Ending 2013 NSA Whistle-Blower Edward Snowden's leaks of classified information have shown that the NSA had BIOS infection capabilities since at least 2008. Moreover, he has used TAILS as a tool to keep his communication with Glenn Greenwald and documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras out of the NSA’s inquisitive eyes. By June 2015 a couple of researchers called Xeno Kovah & Corey Kallenberg have written a whitepaper titled “How Many Million BIOSes Would you Like to Infect?”. The whitepaper presented they have found and responsibly disclosed numerous vulnerabilities in x86 firmware, and they also have provided evidence about the feasibility of widespread BIOS infection using a Proof of Concept called The LightEater. With the LightEater POC, Kovah & Kallenberg have also proven that in the case of installing such BIOS infection, also the tool used by Snowden would have been insufficient to keep an isolated communication. The real value of this work is to achieve the eclectic collection of a significant amount of essential information in a compact form to facilitate the understanding of BIOS/UEFI. The theory is explained using excerpts and references to documents, and practical labs.