This story is false. Not intentionally so, but evidently some technical misunderstandings and a lot of paranoia have led to the claims being made. I'm using a throwaway because I don't want to get involved in a public battle, but I've analyzed everything that he provided, and he jumped to wrong conclusions for everything so far. I am sorry that I'm making this claim without data, but I ask that you consider that he has also made extraordinary claims without providing any data.
The entire audio channel theory is based on a simple twitter suggestion from a third party, and Dragos saying it must be correct because he has also been unable to remove audio interference from his home audio system.
He has yet to provide anyone else with anything but perfectly clean files, with signed and matching hashes from clean Windows 8 installations.
Although some of the methods he claims are rooted in things that have been demonstrated as a proof-of-concept in previous research, his claims represent added twists in ways that are very difficult to swallow. More importantly, it's based on assumptions, and not anything that has actually been analyzed.
(For what it's worth, I analyze malware professionally)
The entire audio channel theory is based on a simple twitter suggestion from a third party, and Dragos saying it must be correct because he has also been unable to remove audio interference from his home audio system.
He has yet to provide anyone else with anything but perfectly clean files, with signed and matching hashes from clean Windows 8 installations.
Although some of the methods he claims are rooted in things that have been demonstrated as a proof-of-concept in previous research, his claims represent added twists in ways that are very difficult to swallow. More importantly, it's based on assumptions, and not anything that has actually been analyzed.
(For what it's worth, I analyze malware professionally)