Security News > 2021 > January > Intel Adds Hardware-Enabled Ransomware Detection to 11th Gen vPro Chips
Intel and Cybereason have partnered to build anti-ransomware defenses into the chipmaker's newly announced 11th generation Core vPro business-class processors.
The hardware-based security enhancements are baked into Intel's vPro platform via its Hardware Shield and Threat Detection Technology, enabling profiling and detection of ransomware and other threats that have an impact on the CPU performance.
Exclusive to vPro, Intel Hardware Shield provides protections against firmware-level attacks targeting the BIOS, thereby ensuring that the operating system runs on legitimate hardware as well as minimizing the risk of malicious code injection by locking down memory in the BIOS when the software is running to help prevent planted malware from compromising the OS. Intel TDT, on the other hand, leverages a combination of CPU telemetry data and machine learning-based heuristics to identify anomalous attack behavior - including polymorphic malware, file-less scripts, crypto mining, and ransomware infections - in real-time.
"The Intel sits beneath applications, the OS, and virtualization layers on the system and delivers a more accurate representation of active threats, system-wide," Intel said.
The ransomware infections have also led to a spike in "Double extortion," where cybercriminals steal sensitive data before deploying the ransomware and hold it hostage in hopes that the victims will pay up rather than risk having their information made public - thus completely undermining the practice of recovering from data backups and avoid paying ransoms.
"Cybereason's multi-layered protection, in collaboration with Intel Threat Detection Technology, will enable full-stack visibility to swiftly detect and block ransomware attacks before the data can be encrypted or exfiltrated," the companies said.