Attacking Computer Security Using Peripheral Device Drivers

Detection of malicious logic on a hardware device is difficult to detect. This thesis proposes a device driver that emulates a hardware device and that device’s software driver. This device driver attacks the target system by accessing the hard disk in order to perform read and write transactions without the knowledge of the operating system or intrusion detection/prevention software. The attacks performed by the driver compromise the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data on the target system’s disk drive. The attacks performed by the device driver have a less than one percent impact on system performance. This thesis, while tested in a Windows environment, applies to other operating systems (such as Linux/Unix, etc.) and thus has major implications for a wide range of users