[mschuster91]

> I want to make a persistent implant/malware that survives OS reinstalls.

You want to look into something called "Windows Platform Binary Table" [1]. Figure out a way to reflash the BIOS or the UEFI firmware for your target device ad-hoc and there you have your implant.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19800807

[baby_souffle]

> You want to look into something called "Windows Platform Binary Table" [1].

Is this how various motherboard manufacturers are embedding their system control software? I was helping a family friend with some computer issues and we could not figure out where the `armoury-crate` (asus software for controlling RGB leds on motherboard :() program kept coming from

[Nextgrid]

That most likely comes from Windows Update though. It now has the ability to download "drivers". It actually had said ability for a long time (back from Vista days if I remember right) but back then it was only downloading the .inf file and associated .sys files/etc, where as nowadays it actually downloads and runs the full vendor bloatware.

[phatskat]

Have your friend grab https://github.com/seerge/g-helper which can disable armory crate. It’s also a lot lighter on your system - I was having constant gradual frame drops (games would start find and performance would slowly degrade) until I tried this and used the option to disable the AC processes.

[BobbyTables2]

Likely so. I think that’s actually the intended use of this “feature”

[ronsor]

Only works if the target is running Windows (paranoid people might be on Linux), so you'd probably want to slip in a malicious UEFI driver directly. Tools like UEFITool can be used to analyze and modify the filesystem of a UEFI firmware image.