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The Black Hat Wi-Fi Exploit
Joe Barr writes to tell us that while many have heard that an Apple was exploited in order to install a rootkit at the recent BlackHat security conference, most people don't know the details of how it works. This is no mistake, it seems that the researchers who demonstrated the flaw were intentionally vague. Some theorize that this is in response to the real or perceived threat of legal action similar to the situation with previous Blackhat presenter, Michael Lynn.
Perhaps it is the exploiter who is better off with the Atheros based WLAN card? Maybe it is still possible to exploit any other WLAN card, but the attacker may benefit from using some WLAN cards over others as the attacking host platform (not the attacked target platform). Reference: http://www.ktwo.ca/security.html
The current exploit was intentionally vague so that attackers would not have the upper-hand. The previous researcher mentioned was arrested for something prior to his presentation; I do not correlate the actions together.
The machine unmakes the man. Now that the machine is so perfect, the engineer is nobody. -Ralph Waldo Emerson
ScuttleMonkey writes to tell us that apparently the 'plot-thickens' as some guy somewhere emailed that some people are 'theorizing' alternate motives for the Blackhats keeping wraps on their so-called 'exploit' (that they tried unsuccessfully to smear a OSX security with).
There is no new substance. This bone has been gnawed clean already. Sounds more like some people are making excuses for something...
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This is BlackHat, folks. They've probably hacked the water fountains to serve Bawls instead of water -- let alone installing a rootkit on a laptop.
Slow news day, I'd say.
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
First hand::Ellch talked a lot about the timings and the reactions of wireless cards to certain packets, as well as the need for a less fatty and feature full tcp/ip protocol. From the talk it sounded like Maynor developed the particular exploit. Ellch talked about his tool fuzze. Ellch's goal was to fingerprint particular wireless users and the driver model they were using....(to decide what Metasploit exploit you'll use this week) If I was a wireless guru, say like some of the other thousands alive, I could make a prediction. If they don't release the exploit soon, someone else will develop an equally powerful exploit into the wild. Buffer overflow the stack..... It's too fat and does more thinking than it should. I say patience is key. Even when they do develop the patch, how many coffee shop users don't apply patches? The biggest weakness in the attack is the fact that it sounds like a proximity attack. If you're not within wireless reach to the victim, you won't be able to attack them. That's just a guess since the video demo of the attack shows the attack from across a desk and not across the office. Cantenna anyone? Wifi-shootout?
Now I'm a big fan of a policy of eventual public disclosure of exploits. The behavior of many big companies have shown that without the pressure of public knowledge of an exploit they will drag their heels about fixing the exploit. However, it is undoubtable that publicly making availible details of an exploit without giving vendors a chance to create a patch increases the number of attackers who are able to execute attacks against that vendor's customers.
Now there are reasonable people who believe this increased danger is pretty much always offset by the benefits of public knowledge of the risk, i.e., a vulnerability you know about is sufficently less risky to justify disclosure. However it is disgustingly biased and misleading to not even acknowledge that some people and companies might reasonably believe total public disclosure harms the end customers. This is especially true when we are talking about the difference between revealing the existance of the exploit and revealing info that might enable someone to copy the exploit.
Moreover, I didn't see the slightest evidence that it was outside pressure that caused this pair not to reveal the details. The tone of this cnet article seems to imply they made the choice themselves to be responsible which seems totally reasonable.
Also I don't understand who would put this pressure on them unless it is the network card manufacturer. Macs, linux and windows machines are supposedly all affected so no one company would take a PR hit relative to others. Unlike the case with the cisco vulnerability.
Yes it's true that vendors tend to be biased toward maintaining their good name. Just like real people they tend to be biased toward the answers that help them out but this is hardly dastardly. True I think they sometimes go to far and chill free speech and harm security research but this seems fairly rare and I see no reason to believe it is happening here.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
Bottom line, assuming the demo is not a hoax, it will work against *nix, Windows, and Mac equally.
This is not a simple matter of exploiting a serivce. The machine might does not even need any publicly accessible services for this attack to be effective.
We all know that wireless cards require soft firmware and drivers in the OS these days. The point is that it's possible to exploit the drivers with specially crafted packets and make the OS run arbitrary code that it thinks is the Wireless driver.
Running code at the level of the OS brings with it full control over the machine. The OS trusts the drivers 100% on almost every system I've used. This means your newly running code can take full control of the machine, and probably even download more code, sniff on you, etc.
It should be possible to exploit this attack even if the machine is connected to a trusted network. All you need to do is send it packets on that network (or pretend to be on that network).
The demo might have been vague, but it still points out some serious flaws with wireless systems on modern operating systems - anyone can send you packets and the OS trusts the software processing those packets 100%...
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What is more likely: (A) A vulnerability exists in at least two WiFi implementations (some external card, and Apple's internal Airport), which allows to compromise systems independent of which operating system is running, or (B) two guys who want their fifteen minutes of fame doctor a video, claiming that they can crack any Mac with WiFi within 60 seconds, conveniently being so vague that nobody can verify or refute their claim, adding in a bit of conspiracy theory (pressure from Apple) on top of it?