The infamous Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) firmware bot, Thunderstrike 2, has landed its maker Xeno Kovah, on the Cupertino company’s payrolls.
Kovah who founded the company which made Thunderstrike 2, LegbaCore, along with partner Corey Kellenberg are now official hires of Apple Inc.
In a tweet in November, Kovah revealed that he and Kellenberg were now involved in working on ‘low level security’ at Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL).
Thunderstrike 2
LegbaCore had caught Apple’s MacBook users by surprise with its differently modelled virus worm. The company had successfully synthesised different virus-worm hybrids to build the Thuderstrike 2.
The worm was known to spread form one Macbook to another, even when they were not connected to the internet. The spread of the virus attack could not be contained as it was hard to detect. Kovah had outlined Thuderstrike 2 as a worm that was tough to detect as it functioned from inside the firmware. Hence security software which ran on Max OS X could not detect the firmware bot, which typically attacked at the time of booting.
Kovah called it a ‘valuable attack’ as it was undetected by antivirus as well as security software and worked prior to the primary OS. Most antivirus software loaded on to device only after the initial operating system is run.
Thunderstrike 2 could do things worse than just corrupting the Macbooks. It could attack some of Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) peripherals such as Thunderbolt Ethernet adapter. This increased Thunderstrikes chances to attack other Macs connected to the adapter.
Fortunately for Apple Inc, LegbaCore took on the responsibility of notifying them. Quick patches were immediately released to plug the bot-risks.
And fortunately for LegbaCore’s founders, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) which typically does not ‘award’ security vulnerability researchers, has hired them. Kovah’s tweet in November has not specified the actual job titles, but involves the pair working on security aspects, for sure.
