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[wierd]

The USB reflash type USB malware is in the wild from criminals. That's the problem with governments playing 'cyber penis terror fun time' with each other.  The criminals examine their code once it gets detected, and then make it their own.

Ars has an article on this type of thing.
http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/07/this-thumbdrive-hacks-computers-badusb-exploit-makes-devices-turn-evil/

This kind of thing is indeed encountered in the wild.
https://www.infopackets.com/news/9370/badusb-attack-now-wild-exploits-follow

[Reelya]

Well, those links are saying that security researchers developed it, as a test case (not related to stuxnet), and then some other researchers released the code to try and force manufacturers to fix the issue. It's not exactly as you described.

BadUSB did not involve governments or criminals, so there's no evidence that criminals reverse-engineered any intelligence agency code in this case.

If you have any info about it being utilized by real criminals since the researchers deliberately leaked the code, let me know. Also I think it needs to be targeted against devices with specific firmware already. e.g. the articles mention targeting a specific manufacturer. This might actually be more difficult for criminal gangs to turn into a catch-all hack than expected since they'd need to do considerable development work and testing to get it to work against different models of usb device.

http://www.wired.com/2014/11/badusb-only-affects-half-of-usbs/

Apparently 1/2 the USB controller chips on the market are potentially hackable. BadUSB doesn't work on the others. It's hard to tell which chip each device uses though, apparently. Maybe someone will develop tools for that.

I've looked around for some evidence of it's actual use as an attack, I found nothing. I think it's in the potential attack basket, but not a risk worth freaking out over right now.

[wierd]

While BadUSB was not created that way, a great many other SCADA type infectors WERE, for instance, the Stuxnet malware you just mentioned.

There was also the Sony Rootkit that got turned into criminal malware shortly afterward as well.

The lesson here is to not create malware, and to not create systems that ware easily penetrated.
Those are both things that governments have difficult times understanding. They create malware to get into systems of other countries, and they demand easy access vulnerabilities to be baked in to allow them to monitor systems "For law enforcement purposes"-- which ultimately makes them vulnerable, and pathetically so.

Take for instance, the weakness in RSA keypair generation that caused such a stink recently, because the NSA insisted on using a dodgy method of producing entropy to make the keys that allowed them to crack keys made with it.

So while BadUSB is was not made by governments, it *IS* an example of criminals picking up tools and making them their own, and government created tools are no exception to malware makers picking up and using whatever is useful to them.

[Reelya]

But I can't find any evidence of criminals using BadUSB, I've been searching but there doesn't seem to be any reports of attacks or issues other than hypothetical ones from security researchers. remember it was researchers who deliberately leaked the code. but since then, no mention of actual attacks.

Have you got some articles on that, that I'm missing?

Even guys who sell BadUSB-proof drives (which is bullshit since 50% of existing controller chips are immune anyway) don't mention actual attacks in their adverts:
http://www.ironkey.com/en-US/solutions/protect-against-badusb.html
Like I said, for BadUSB specifically, there is zero evidence of attacks going on or criminals utilizing it. Otherwise, the people making actual money off anti-BadUSB protection would at least highlight these risks.

[wierd]

BadUSB is basically what the original PS3 hack was.  Instead of doing something like logging keys, it instead sent signals to the USB stack of the PS3 to make it jump execution and leave the hypervizor vulnerable to execution of a payload.

http://www.ps3-chips.com/

Since the USB driver stack lives in kernel space in most OSes, including linux, something like BadUSB could be used to gain very low level access to the system when done right-- which is exactly what the PSJailbreak exploit did/does.

[miauw62]

What I *ment* was that these things are usually rather low-level and hard to make (and thus usually very specifically targeted, and thus usually not all that profitable for your average cybercriminal, who wants to hit as many targets as possible).
Malicious BIOS code, for example, isn't actually all THAT powerful. The main thing here is that the interrupt handlers live on the BIOS, so you could hijack these and do nasty stuff. But it's VERY low-level and thus very specific to hardware.

[Thief^]

As well as avast and malwarebytes, set up your admin account, then make a user account with no admin rights. Always use the user account except when installing new software. That's another line of defense - attackers will often hijack the user permissions of the account running the code, so if you don't have more privileges than needed for day to day operations, you will get less attacks.

That's exactly what UAC does on Windows Vista onwards, presuming you haven't disabled it...
You log in as your "admin" account, but all software runs with regular "user" permissions unless you specifically allow it to run as admin.

[Cheesecake]

Hi guys. I don't know why my laptop is slow at running games (and other stuff as well, especially start-up). I bought it to be used as a gaming laptop.

Specs: (I don't know how to copy paste them from the control panel to here, so I just wrote them down. Tell me if I missed something important you guys need.)

Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4200U CPU @ 1.60GHz 2.40 GHz

Installed memory (RAM): 8.00 GB

System type: 64-bit Operating System, x64-based processor.

My laptop has two graphics cards for some reason. In dxdiag it shows Intel Integrated Graphics (or something like that) and I also have Nvidia Geforce 740M. (Maybe the problem with games is that they use the Intel graphics card instead of the Nvidia?)

I don't know if that's good for a gaming laptop. Sometimes games like Skyrim run smoothly (even modded). Other times it's really laggy (even without mods). I need advice please. Thanks in advance!

[miauw62]

If you want to make sure that everything uses the Nvidia card instead of the shity intel integrated card, do this:
1. Right-click on your desktop
2. Select "Nvidia control panel"
3. Go to "Manage 3D settings" on the sidepane
4. Make sure you're on global settings
5. In the dropdown box of "preferred graphics processor" select "High-peformance Nvidia processor"

Now everything should use your graphics card instead of the integrated intel graphics. Maybe that helps. Skyrim has a tendency of being choppy, ask around in the Skyrim thread in OG for help.

[dennislp3]

Hi guys. I don't know why my laptop is slow at running games (and other stuff as well, especially start-up). I bought it to be used as a gaming laptop.

Specs: (I don't know how to copy paste them from the control panel to here, so I just wrote them down. Tell me if I missed something important you guys need.)

Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4200U CPU @ 1.60GHz 2.40 GHz

Installed memory (RAM): 8.00 GB

System type: 64-bit Operating System, x64-based processor.

My laptop has two graphics cards for some reason. In dxdiag it shows Intel Integrated Graphics (or something like that) and I also have Nvidia Geforce 740M. (Maybe the problem with games is that they use the Intel graphics card instead of the Nvidia?)

I don't know if that's good for a gaming laptop. Sometimes games like Skyrim run smoothly (even modded). Other times it's really laggy (even without mods). I need advice please. Thanks in advance!

You have 2 videocards because Intel processors come with graphics chipsets in then now...this is for businesses and stuff like that...just buy a processor and not have to worry about a graphics card or anything.

The Geforce 740M might be part of the problem. Geforce gaming cards start at X50 and above (750-760 etc) so dont it expect to hold up to games with high requirements

[Reelya]

Other likely stuff:

make sure to close as many apps as possible when running intensive games, there could be background tasks taking up memory. Also, uninstall apps you don't need / never use. Clutter is never good for performance.
 
Possibly, install an SSD hard-drive in case a shitty slow main drive is keeping things slow. This works best if you can fit two drives in though, one for the C-drive and a bigger cheap one for data. Can possibly work with a fast SSD and use external 1 or 2TB hard-drive for storage.

Did you buy this new or already used? In that case, maybe you need the software tuned up. get ccleaner at the very least even if it's new, run that to remove junk files.

[Cheesecake]

Thanks for the advice guys! I'll try out ccleaner, see if that works. Maybe I should get my laptop checked anyways, I kinda dropped it nearly a year ago and someone spilled water on it as well.

[thedrelle]

Two other things:

your on a laptop. If it's been on for any period of time,  it has gotten warm, and as a result, the cpu and gpu has been slowed down to minimize system damage. That may be why sometimes it seems to be very laggy when playing a game. Make sure when you want to play, your laptop has been off and is in a cool place. Also, to not treat it like it's namesake. DO NOT put your laptop on your lap, or on blankets, or any kind of fabric. The vents on the bottom get blocked, airflow is reduced,  and the laptop gets hotter faster. Also it is sucking lint which quickly clogs the heat sinks, killing airflow and ruining you cpu/gpu.

Second thing: go to control panel, system, advanced system settings. In the advanced tab click on performance settings, and then go to the advanced tab(again). Look at your virtual memory, click on the change tab. If the paging file is currently allocated at less than 2 gigs, then you should go in and reallocate it to a higher value, at or above the reccommended number. This will improve how fast your system loads content in a game, and help it run smoothly all the time.

[Wolfkit]

If it's getting hot, then two things.
1. Don't use it on beds, etc. If you want to use it on a bed, then buy a cooling pad/laptop stand. This lifts it off of the bed to provide more airflow, and often has a fan in it to help cool the laptop.
2. Dust may have accumulated inside. Buy a can of canned air, and use it to clean out your laptop.

[i2amroy]

Second thing: go to control panel, system, advanced system settings. In the advanced tab click on performance settings, and then go to the advanced tab(again). Look at your virtual memory, click on the change tab. If the paging file is currently allocated at less than 2 gigs, then you should go in and reallocate it to a higher value, at or above the reccommended number. This will improve how fast your system loads content in a game, and help it run smoothly all the time.

I'm not sure you're understanding the paging file correctly. The paging file is used to store things that you aren't currently using much to free up the RAM for other uses. As such it's only really needed to the extent that you are going to be running things beyond your current amount of RAM. With 8 GB, it's probably likely that you don't need much of a paging file, since if you were running that many programs your computer is probably going to be running hella-slow just on the processing end anyways.

More information on the paging file.