I estimate the odds of an indestructible multi-platform virus that can jump air gaps being a real thing at less than 1%
I estimate the odds that there’s a virus, which has all the capabilities BadBIOS is claimed to have (acoustic networking, spread through USB stick firmware, regeneration from system firmware), at 99.9%. All of the pieces have published precedent, and there are multiple published non-secret meta-malware packages for putting pieces like that together.
Conditional on malware like that existing, I’d estimate the probability that Dragos Ruiu having malware like that at 80% (the main alternative is that he’s got malware, but he’s wrong about its communication channels or mechanism of spread). However, at this point conditional on him having it, I’d estimate the probability of him successfully procuring a complete sample (as opposed to a loader module) at only 50%.
I think the main alternative is that he has paranoid delusions and no malware at all. It seems unlikely that he would incorrectly conclude that a piece of ordinary malware has all these advanced capabilities.
I estimate the odds that there’s a virus, which has all the capabilities BadBIOS is claimed to have (acoustic networking, spread through USB stick firmware, regeneration from system firmware), at 99.9%. All of the pieces have published precedent, and there are multiple published non-secret meta-malware packages for putting pieces like that together.
Conditional on malware like that existing, I’d estimate the probability that Dragos Ruiu having malware like that at 80% (the main alternative is that he’s got malware, but he’s wrong about its communication channels or mechanism of spread). However, at this point conditional on him having it, I’d estimate the probability of him successfully procuring a complete sample (as opposed to a loader module) at only 50%.
Gwern created a predictionbook entry for this question.
I think the main alternative is that he has paranoid delusions and no malware at all. It seems unlikely that he would incorrectly conclude that a piece of ordinary malware has all these advanced capabilities.
He being wrong about what kind of malware he has doesn’t mean he has ordinary malware.