PC_Advisor_Issue_264_July_2017

News: Analysis
For the past few years, Intel has moved
away from the once-famous ‘tick-tock’
scaling, where new processes were ‘ticks’
and new architectures were ‘tocks’. It
is switching to what the company calls
‘hyperscaling’ advances, a new metaphor
announced at the event to describe
manufacturing advances. Intel will now
use the ‘+’ and ‘++’ symbols to mark
advances in the 14- and 10nm processes.
Hyperscaling will help Intel cram new
architectural and process innovations
without hurrying a move to a new
manufacturing process.
New lithography techniques such
as quad-patterning will help Intel take
advantage of the economic benefits
described by Moore’s Law, explained Kaizad
Mistry, vice president and co-director of
logic technology development at Intel. That
will improve transistor density, which also
brings performance and power-efficiency
enhancements. Intel is projecting 15
percent improvements in performance
with each advance in the 10nm ‘+’ and ‘++’
processes. Intel will also reduce the chip
size to pack I/O, logic and SRAM blocks
into a much smaller area.
Intel is doing what the company calls
“aggressive pitch scaling”, which involves
packing wires, transistors and 3D fins closer
together. On the 10nm process, that helps
provide transistor density improvement that
is 2.7 times better than the 14nm process.
The chipmaker is also bringing the ability
to mix and match different cores into an
integrated system-on-chip. The cores could
be made using different manufacturing
processes. It’s also much how ARM chips are
designed and made, a process that integrates
CPUs, modems, graphics processors and
other cores into a single chip. J
WikiLeaks: CIA used bits of Carberp
Trojan code for malware deployment
The CIA’s hacking operations allegedly borrowed elements from the Carberp
financial malware when the code was leaked in 2013, writes Michael Kan
W
hen the source code to a suspected
Russian-made malware leaked
online in 2013, guess who used
it? A recent release from WikiLeaks claims
the US CIA borrowed some of the code to
bolster its own hacking operations.
In April, WikiLeaks released 27 documents
that allegedly detail how the CIA customised
its malware for Windows systems.
The CIA borrowed a few elements
from the Carberp financial malware when
developing its own hacking tool known as
Grasshopper, according to those documents.
Carberp gained infamy as a Trojan
program that can steal online banking
credentials and other financial information
from its victims’ computers. The malware,
which likely came from the criminal
underground, was particularly problematic
in Russia and other former Soviet states. In
2013, the source code was leaked, sparking
worries in the security community that
more cybercriminals might use the malware.
The WikiLeaks release includes
supposed CIA user manuals that show the
agency took an interest in the malware,
especially with the way it can survive and
linger on a Windows PC.
“The persistence method, and parts of the
installer, were taken and modified to fit our
needs,” the US spy agency allegedly wrote in
one manual, dated January 2014.
It’s unclear why the agency chose
Carberp. However, the borrowed elements
were only used in one ‘persistence module’
meant for the CIA’s Grasshopper hacking
tool. That tool is designed to build custom
malware configured with different payloads,
according to a separate document.
The WikiLeaks’ release describes several
other modules that work with Grasshopper
to let malware persist on a PC, such as by
leveraging Windows Task Scheduler or a
Windows registry run key. However, no actual
source code was included in the release.
Nevertheless, the documents will probably
help people detect the CIA’s hacking tools,
which is WikiLeaks’ intention in releasing the
classified information.
In March, WikiLeaks began releasing a
trove of secret files allegedly obtained from
the CIA. Those first leaks described how the
agency has a library of hacking techniques
borrowed from malware out in the wild.
The US spy agency has so far declined to
comment on the authenticity of WikiLeaks’
document dump. J
IMAGE: CIA
July 2017 www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news 17