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Is making a clean install enough to remove potential malware?

rated 0 times [ 3] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 612 / 3 Years ago, thu, august 12, 2021, 8:08:46

Is formatting the disk and reinstalling the system from scratch (to Ubuntu) enough to remove any potential hidden software spyware, keyloggers etc.?

Or can something still persist installed in the bios or something like that? What to do then?

To be clear, not concerned about malware. The question is more specific about a machine to which people other than the user had physical access for many hours. So when the user returns cannot be sure nothing changed. So the user makes a fresh install after some weeks. Is that enough to "clean" it?

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uestred

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3 Years ago

answered 3 Years ago variark · Accepted Answer

Malware cannot usually be installed in the BIOS (it is read only), and also Ubuntu is not very open to malware (it should be the least of your worries, to be honest, and that issue has been covered on this site before).

If you did get malware however, reinstalling (so long as the contents of the affected directory are not preserved) would work. However, you should not even have to go this far, as often times, simply deleting or replacing the affected files should fix it.

Someone having physical access gives them a lot of power over the system, but it highly unlikely for them to put anything in your BIOS, so just a reinstall of the OS should be enough.