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Intel CPU Privilege Escalation Exploit
Eukariote writes "A paper and exploit code detailing a privilege escalation attack on Intel CPUs has just been published. The vulnerability, uncovered by security researchers Joanna Rutkowska (of Blue Pill fame), Rafal Wojtczuk, and, independently, Loic Duflot, makes use of Intel's System Management Mode (SMM). Quote: "The attack allows for privilege escalation from Ring 0 to the SMM on many recent motherboards with Intel CPUs. Rafal implemented a working exploit with code execution in SMM." The implications of this exploit are severe."
This could make the apple bricking patch look like a kindergarten party
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
Haven't these guys ever booted from a CD?
Seastead this.
... Joanna Rutkowska is hot!
Run all code on a 286 or below.
Wonder if this will spawn a run on Mac G5's.
Does this mean Apples are vulnerable?
No. Macs are imperious to rootkits. Now check out this super cool beta version of Safari:
if you're on vulnerable hardware, once some malware that uses this trick has gained root, nothing short of physically setting fire to the motherboard will clean it. Reinstalling from scratch can't help you.
"If you are running in ring zero..."
No-one is going to running in my ring 0 unless they pay a million or two
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Hard real time is a world in which stuff is expected to actually work every time.
So instead of "real time kernel" it should be called "every time kernel" :-)
I for one would like to welcome our new flaming devil overlords