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The infection of a computer's BIOS chip was previously considered something out of science fiction. The BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) is responsible for preserving the system configuration and executing basic input/output functions. However, two Argentinian specialists, Alfredo Ortega and Anibal Sacco from Core Security Technologies, demonstrated at the CanSecWest security conference the successful introduction of a special program for remote control, or rootkit, into the BIOS. In particular, they managed to infect computers with Windows and OpenBSD operating systems, as well as a virtual machine running OpenBSD on the VMware Player platform, in front of the audience. Although infecting the BIOS using Ortega and Sacco's method requires prior compromise of the machine or physical access to it, the consequences of such an infection are simply terrible – even after completely erasing the information on the hard drive, reflashing the BIOS, and reinstalling the operating system, the machine is re-infected upon the next reboot. More details about the BIOS attack can be found in the ThreatPost blog.