Apple Keyboard Firmware Hack Demonstrated

Anonymouse writes with this excerpt from SemiAccurate: "Apple keyboards are vulnerable to a hack that puts keyloggers and malware directly into the device's firmware. This could be a serious problem, and now that the presentation and code (PDF) is out there, the bad guys will surely be exploiting it. The vulnerability was discovered by K. Chen, and he gave a talk on it at Black Hat this year (PDF). The concept is simple: a modern Apple keyboard has about 8K of flash memory, and 256 bytes of working RAM. For the intelligent, this is more than enough space to have a field day. ... The new firmware can do anything you want it to. Chen demonstrated code which, when you put in a password and hit return, starts playing back the last five characters typed in, LIFO. It is a rudimentary keylogger; a proof of concept more than anything else. Since there is about 1K of flash free in the keyboard itself, you can log quite a few keystrokes totally transparently."

Comments

totally sweet

[Anonymous Coward]

first post

Too much work

[rolfwind]

I don't know if it's still applicable to the new MacBooks, but on my 3-4 year old G4s, reinstalling the keyboard is a ton of work (I assume the keyboard cable has to be taken out to reprogram it???):
http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Repair/Installing-PowerBook-G4-Aluminum-15-Inch-1-1-5-GHz-Keyboard/223/1

Takes about an hour, less if you're skilled at it. With that much access to the actual machine... this is nothing but a proof of concept, as there are easier ways to do it, imo.

Emily

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

> The vulnerability was discovered by K Chen

That guy's a fucking idiot! He couldn't think his way out of a paper bag.

Oh, wait. I thought you said K Fed. n/m