What steps can I take to detect if a brand new computer has been compromised? Wo

Question

What steps can I take to detect if a brand new computer has been compromised?

Would it take an actor with significant resources to compromise a system and still have it appear to start the standard Windows set up wizard? Partly I ask this because I wonder if reinstalling the operating system would help or if anyone who could compromise the system in this way could also compromise it (through the BIOS) such that a reinstall would still not help.

I ask because I just received a brand new laptop in the mail that arrived in a box with the only seal compromised (i.e. I could open the box and remove the laptop without cutting any tape or breaking any seal). I tried to ask a question in the least subjective way I could but please comment if you can suggest a less subjective form of the question or can recommend a better forum asking about this than Stack Exchange.

Explanation / Answer

I would suggest that you re-install the OS to reduce the probability of a compromised system. It is relatively trivial to modify the windows image to include malware and then install it on your machine. Software such as NTLite is frequently used by OEMs to install antivirus trial versions that come with the machine. The same software can be used to pre-load malware onto the machine.

Although very rare, there are instances of malware affecting the BIOS. You could download the latest BIOS firmware image from the manufacturer's website and flash it.

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