Dragos Ruiu, a well known security expert, says he has been hit by seemingly invincible firmware-infecting malware.

Ruiu said the software nasty, Dubbed BadBIOS, is capable of jumping over air gaps, meddle with a number of different operating systems, and survive motherboard firmware rewrites.

The rootkit supposedly infects USB sticks, reprograms their micro-controller firmware to hide itself, and injects itself into a sterile computer once the stick is plugged in.

Canadian Ruiu claims he's been fighting against the terrifying strain for weeks, but nobody else has come across it.

Industry veteran Paul Ducklin has said "It's possible, of course, that this is an elaborate hoax, intended as a combined publicity exercise and social engineering experiment that will be wrapped up at PacSec."