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BIOS "Rootkit" Preloaded In 60% of New Laptops
Keldrin_1 writes "Researchers Alfredo Ortega and Anibal Sacco, from Core Security Technologies, have discovered a vulnerability in the 'Computrace LoJack for Laptops' software. This is a BIOS-level application that calls home for instructions in case the laptop is ever lost or stolen. However, what the application considers 'home' is subject to change. This allows the creation of malware capable of 'infecting the BIOS with persistent code that survive reboots and reflashing attempts.' Computers from Dell, Lenovo, HP, Toshiba, Asus, and others may be affected."
P.C. Phone Home.
Sounds like it's right up Sony's alley.
"You can't really dust for vomit" --Nigel Tufnel
LoJack swiftly changes to HiJack with a good splash of water
Libera te ex Inferis!
Just like SPTD is not a rootkit when it hides my emulated dvd from copy protection software.
This is a popular piece of software that happens to have a potentially serious bug that the vendors and users should be demanding be fixed, but it doesn't make it a rootkit.
What if a bug is discovered in the boot code?
Palm trees and 8
Busg happen. Consider the /. "write once" paradigm.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
I know it's hard to believe. When doing our research (I'm Alfredo, hi!) we couldn't find a notebook *without* the Computrace agent. It's bad.
http://store.lojackforlaptops.com/store/absolute/DisplayProductDetailsPage/productID.104509100
Congrats, there is a Mac version available as well. PC's and Mac's are all the same parts made by the same slaves chained together. there is a few companies in the world that make a basic computer and then Dell, HP, Apple and others add a few things and brand it for themselves.
Any way to tell if your laptop has this "feature"?
And is there any way to disable it?
I use a Macbook.
As do I, but that does not mean that I have any delusions as it relates to security.
There are quite a bits of exploitable code available that, if properly engineered, can do quite a bit of damage to an Apple computer. Simply because there is no Mac version of the "Melissa" virus does not mean that as a Mac user I should assume that there will never be one.
And let's not forget the iLife torrent that had something special added to it. There are plenty of individuals attempting to prove to the general public that a Mac is no more secure than it's Windows counterpart, and it will be not a false sense of security, but a lack of personal responsibility that will assist in that.
Opinion, obviously. Results may vary.
Those who believe the Internet is private,
find their privates are on the Internet.
The pair recommended a digital signature scheme to authenticate the call-home process.
How's that going to help? If you can replace the IP address then you can replace the certificate and signature too. If you have access to modify the BIOS flash, it's game over.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
We're talking about a BIOS rootkit. The BIOS runs directly on the hardware. It doesn't really care what OS you're loading, unless it has some specific reason to.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Woosh
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
From the Lojack compatibility list here is a list of company:
ASUS, Dell Fujitsu, GammaTech, Gateway, GD Itronix, Getac, HP, Lenovo,,Motion, Panasonic, Toshiba
You can find a list of models on the "bios compatibility list"
Please tell me if I'm missing something, but isn't the real vulnerability that the BIOS can be modified with unsigned code? A BIOS that allows this can be infected with a rootkit regardless of whether the LoJack code was there.
Go into the BIOS setup, you can choose to activate the feature if you paid for the license, or deactivate a previously activated agent. Choosing disable removes the feature completely. it can NEVER come back. TFA is hype. If it is never enabled in the bios NOTHING is installed on windows.
Been there, had that, in the 80s! Atari 1040ST had TOS (Tramiel Operating System) on EPROMs! Have yet to se a virus or rootkit that carried an EPROM eraser around with it, so as long as you booted up without media in the drives machine was guaranteed clean! God I miss That machine!! GEM was sweet!
Disable only works if the product was never activated. if the BIOS is set to active, AND the client software on the machine contacts the servers for Computrace, and verifies it should be licensed, then it "flips a switch" in that BIOS setting, and you can NEVER disable it again.
They need to write to the software, or else the software will always try to contact them, and then anyone could track any laptop with a supeana, ruining their business model.. Instead, it has to be "turned on".
Also, this software in the BIOS does not actually contact anyone directly. All the BIOS level crap does is forcibly try to re-install the agent software under windows. This could get ugly, if you update the BIOS, to try to force it to install a different program every time someone reloads windows...
Of course, I wonder what happens if I buy an "off lease" laptop, that was at one point activated...
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
First off, the 'feature' comes on a lot of laptops. Doesn't mean its enabled. You have to request it to be enabled in order for it to come from factory with it actually turned on.
If you don't turn it on, it doesn't do anything, no phone home, no remote wipe, no tracking.
Guess what, same thing applies to Blackberrys, and iPhones, and cars with LoJack that have remote shutoff. For every feature there is a potential risk, thats the way the world works.
If you want the potential to remotely locate/track and wipe a laptop or PC, then you also get the potential that someone else can do it as well.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
They have every DV/TC-model of HP Laptop listed - I used to specifically work on all DV/TC/NC/NX models, I've NEVER ONCE seen this in BIOS during any of my repairs. NEVER. Also, this software was never listed in part of HP's troubleshooting guides, and that usually means that feature is not there.
I rebooted my laptop (DV9000, full featured loaded with every possible thing offered) and this 'rootkit' in BIOS is nowhere to be found, at all. Not on my friend's DV2000. Not on the new TC4400 I have in my art room.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
That's nice. "Hello, customer. There's a fatal bug in your BIOS. Of course, there's not a damn thing you can do about it, since the BIOS on this model isn't changable, but at least you know about it now."
LOLjack
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.
Damn, I've just wasted 15 years of my life porting BIOSes to different platforms. Thanks for telling me that it was all unnecessary. Hardware manufacturers will also be pleased to know that they can just use a smaller ROM of a few KB instead of the 4MB ROMs that are coming into use now. That will save a few pennies.
I bow before your in depth and vastly superior knowledge of the subject.
Well, once upon a time, that was the case :
In case of bug you needed either to move the BIOS chip to a separate flasher, or at least use a hardware switch on the motherboard to switch between 5v and 12v to enable BIOS chip flashing.
Nowadays, even Windows applications can write to the BIOS without any peculiar form of control. No switch at all involved.
BIOS rootkits were just bound to happen. What makes it even easier for rootkits, is that 90% of all PC uses the same brands of BIOS and those BIOS are designed in a modular fashion making it easy to add a "rootkit" modules without needing the re-create a whole new BIOS (see example of how to add an embed FreeDOS inside an Award BIOS).
That pretty much stupid : Most motherboard have a couple of bugs fixed during the first couple of months. Then there's mostly no need to reflash the BIOS, except for supporting newer CPUs, etc... which would require opening the case and accessing the motherboard anyway. But for the whole lifetime of the BIOS, it remains completely writeable even from user-space application from within highly insecure OSes.
Hardware "write-protection" switches for BIOSes should be reintroduced. Simple fix for a simple problem.
Instead you can stay sure that the manufacturers and Microsoft are going to require several layers of TPM and similar forms of DRM in BIOS which won't even guaranty that BIOSes would be protected from bugs.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Yeah, it's pretty funny that a piece of software that has nothing to do with Microsoft that gets loaded on hardware that Microsoft has nothing to do with by the OEMs themselves through a deal with a completely different company is not mentioned in a Microsoft commercial about Windows. Or actually, it's really not.
Actually this could be built into EFI. Apple don't, but if a laptop manufacturer wanted to they could. It's even easier than BIOS - an EFI ROM is a structured filesystem containing all the drivers and commands required to boot.. things like the display and keyboard drivers. Adding this software could be done after the fact without even having to touch the original code.
Sorry but the BIOS has not been small and simple for about 20 years. It does far more than simply launch a bootloader. New technologies have constantly been added to the BIOS and each one has added to the complexity. APM, PnP, PCI, ACPI, EPP/ECP, BBS, UEFI, PCIe etc etc. The 4MB ROM is not yet full of BIOS code, that's still only about 1.5MB give or take. However Intel boards also have code in there for their manageability engine etc. With a reasonable amount of headroom in the ROM manufacturers are looking to add value by using that available space to include new features hence this Lojack fiasco.
OSS doesn't stand much of a chance of producing a BIOS until it has a suitably open hardware platform to go with it. So much of a BIOS is intimately connected to the hardware that without access to the full specs the hardware would be obsolete before it could be reverse engineered.
This is a very bad thing. A "security" product should not allow downloading of software. This is even worse. It allows hidden downloading of software not visible to the user.
Supposedly it's delivered "turned off"? But how do you know it's turned off at startup? How do you know it wasn't turned on during operating system loading, or wasn't turned on by any of the preloaded crap that the "major PC manufacturers" preload? How do you know there isn't some way to turn it on remotely?
No computer with this software in ROM should be used for proprietary material, legal documents, medical records regulated by the HIPPA, financial records regulated by the SEC, or anything else that might attract an opponent. If you just play WoW, go ahead.