If it's different firmware that's infected (like your BIOS/UEFI) then it can turn on the wi-fi card and then do evil wi-fi things.įirmware doing evil wi-fi things and drivers doing normal wi-fi things would be likely to clash with each other and cause the wi-fi card to stop working properly, so it's not likely, but it's possible. If it's turned on though, it can do evil stuff.
If your wi-fi card is turned off (no power) then it doesn't matter what firmware's on it. Except if the device with the firmware is turned off (as pointed out by "forest"). I strongly suspect the driver can turn it back on without Windows noticing. Of course even a driver can't use the hardware if it's turned off. "forest" mentioned in a comment that some hardware can be turned off. A device driver is a small piece of software that tells the operating system and other software how to communicate with a piece of hardware. (Let's say you want to update one of your System device's drivers, then click on System device and select a particular driver.) Right-click on the driver and select Update driver. Plus, the driver is the one that knows whether the device is enabled! It could pretend to Windows that the device is disabled, while actually it's enabled and transmitting spy data. First, open the Windows Device Manager, then follow the steps: Click on the hardware category that you want to update. Plus, Device Manager shows devices, not drivers. It would have to be done on purpose, maliciously. They can erase themselves from that list (and similar lists) and still continue to operate. Most Windows (and Linux and Mac) drivers run in kernel mode and have full access to the operating system, including the parts that store the list of drivers.
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