Malware, using your BIOS as a hosting platform

A chilling technique that uses a computer’s BIOS to store malware so that it can survive a boot. This means you can replace your hard drive, or use software packages such as Deep Freeze (that effectively restore any changes made to your disk – with the intent of having a pristine malware-free image upon reboot) and STILL the malware can rear its ugly head, because it is installed in a persistent state in BIOS.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=2962

The actual presentation was given at CanSecWest, it can be found here:

http://i.zdnet.com/blogs/core_bios.pdf