Enlarge / Physical serial ports (the blue ones) are fortunately a relic of a lost era and are nowadays quite rare to find on PCs. But their virtual counterparts are alive and well, and they can be used for some exciting things. (credit: Ericf)
When you're a bad guy breaking into a network, the first problem you need to solve is, of course, getting into the remote system and running your malware on it. But once you're there, the next challenge is usually to make sure that your activity is as hard to detect as possible. Microsoft has detailed a neat technique used by a group in Southeast Asia that abuses legitimate management tools to evade firewalls and other endpoint-based network monitoring.
The group, which Microsoft has named PLATINUM, has developed a system for sending files—such as new payloads to run and new versions of their malware—to compromised machines. PLATINUM's technique leverages Intel's Active Management Technology (AMT) to do an end-run around the built-in Windows firewall. The AMT firmware runs at a low level, below the operating system, and it has access to not just the processor, but also the network interface.
The AMT needs this low-level access for some of the legitimate things it's used for. It can, for example, power cycle systems, and it can serve as an IP-based KVM (keyboard/video/mouse) solution, enabling a remote user to send mouse and keyboard input to a machine and see what's on its display. This, in turn, can be used for tasks such as remotely installing operating systems on bare machines. To do this, AMT not only needs to access the network interface, it also needs to simulate hardware, such as the mouse and keyboard, to provide input to the operating system.