Are MBR Infections Back in Fashion?

[Jack]

Writing on the Symantec Connect blog, researcher Hon Lau notes that researchers there have a doubling of master boot record (or MBR) malware between 2009 and 2010, with 2011 on track to double it again. The increase may be due to the release of open source code for the BootRoot MBR malware, Symantec said.

A Master Boot Record (MBR) is an area of the hard disk (usually the first sector) used by a computer to perform start up operations. It is one of the first things to be read and executed by the computer hardware when a computer is powered on, even before the operating system itself. As far as trying to get access to the hardware first, you can’t really beat the MBR for that, with the exception of hardware ROM (BIOS) itself.

Read more

They say that fashion comes in cycles, is MBR malware making a comeback in 2011? It certainly looks that way. The following infographic summarizes these threats and what they do.

 

[jamescv7]

This will be my worst nightmare if my computer will be infected with MBR.

But since these days, tools have the ability to replace MBR (like Hitman Pro)