Hacking Team's malware uses a UEFI rootkit to survive operating system reinstalls

Surveillance software maker Hacking Team has provided its government customers with the ability to infect the low-level firmware found in laptops and other computers that they wanted to spy on. The company developed a tool that can be used to modify a computer's UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) so that it silently reinstalls its surveillance tool even if the hard drive is wiped clean or replaced. UEFI is a replacement for the traditional BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) and is meant ...