Windows Boot Sequence
In this section we will cover how Windows loads into our PCs from pressing the Power Button until we see the Windows desktop. If you understand how Windows loads and starts up, you can much more easily find out how attackers are designing their malware to be hidden during the boot up process. We will not cover the Boot Sequence in depth; all we want to do is explain the basics and provide you with the right resources if you wish to explore more, in order to build your Cyber Defense Strategy more effectively from an endpoint perspective.
Figure 30: Windows booting
- SRAM: Static Random Access Memory
- PBR: Partition Boot record
- MBR: Master Boot Record
- BIOS: Firmware used to hardware initialization
- UEFI: Unified Extensible Firmware Interface
Startup items
On Apple computers, startup items are executed during boot up. They usually have configuration information that informs the MacOS what execution order to use. However, they...