From the course: ISC2 Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) (2024) Cert Prep

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Hardware and firmware security

Hardware and firmware security

From the course: ISC2 Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) (2024) Cert Prep

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Hardware and firmware security

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- [Instructor] Some attacks may target the very basic building blocks of a computing system that work before the operating system even loads. Operating systems are special pieces of software, but they're large and complex and they must be stored on disk. When you turn a computer on, it doesn't yet have the operating system loaded, and one of its first tasks during the boot process is to load the operating system from disk and start it up. Now, that might leave you asking a logical question, if the operating system hasn't loaded, what software is actually loading the operating system? The answer for many years was something called the basic input/output system or BIOS. BIOS is a lightweight operating system that's stored on firmware inside the computer, that's the very first thing to load when the computer starts. BIOS contains the basic functionality necessary for the computer to access its boot disk and then load the full operating system. If an attacker is able to gain control of…

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