Slashdot Mirror
Thunderbolt Rootkit Vector
New submitter Holi sends this news from PC World:
Attackers can infect MacBook computers with highly persistent boot rootkits by connecting malicious devices to them over the Thunderbolt interface. The attack, dubbed Thunderstrike, installs malicious code in a MacBook's boot ROM (read-only memory), which is stored in a chip on the motherboard. It was devised by a security researcher named Trammell Hudson based on a two-year old vulnerability and will be demonstrated next week at the 31st Chaos Communication Congress in Hamburg.
It shouldn't surprise anybody that a malicious PCI-E card can access a system.
Well, you're pretty wrong: https://trmm.net/EFI
SPI Flash - is an eeprom.
No, by definition he's right: It's tough to overwrite a READ ONLY MEMORY . Of course, the firmware in the Mac isn't actually stored in a true ROM but in an EEPROM or some other solid-state memory that can be overwritten. So the article is incorrect or misleading to call that chip a ROM.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
If I have physical access to your machine, I'm going to get you one way or another.
Firewire, USB 3.0, and Thunderbolt all have DMA, which means any device hooked to a host can pretty much do anything they want to the host, no matter what the host hardware or OS is. I didn't think this sort of thing was still news?
Almost as stupid as making PCI-E part of an external bus. The BIOS write protect jumper of old was the right idea.
But when all it requires is connecting an arbitrary malicious Thunderbolt device - a root-kit could be installed when you dock your computer, or connect to a monitor or ethernet/firewire adapter, or even a mouse.
Yes, "mission-critical" security systems should already be physically isolated. But not everything is physically isolated (work laptops, for instance), and this class of attack makes it easier to covertly compromise devices, even while in plain view. Would all of your coworkers object to someone plugging in a mouse on their laptop?
This is one area where good hardware design can fix the problem. Those SPI EEPROMs have a Write-Protect pin, which should be set disabled unless a physical switch is enabled (jumper anyone?).
Yes, it requires opening your computer to update firmware, but firmware updates are a dangerous operation anyway and should not be permitted willy-nilly.
Best response I've seen all day. But good luck convincing Apple that anybody but a "Genius" should be cracking open an apple device. Aren't they still using those patented fuck-you^W pentalobe screws?
So if you get hit by this attack, have you been... Thunderstruck?? /me shows self to door
... isn't, but I hear his agent is.
Tell your friend Veronica
It's time to celebrate Chanukah.
An attacker with physical access to the target is usually a bad thing (tm),
The attacker does not need physical access. All the attacker needs to do is sell hacked thunderbolt cables on ebay or alibaba.
Plus, thunderbolt daisy-chains, so (if you are handy with rework tools or Intel ever gets the stick out of their ass about selling the chips) the malicious device could either be a (subverted) normal looking peripheral or a surprisingly small lump lurking within a thunderbolt cable or somewhere within the chain.
The proof of concept is probably a big hairy bundle of prototype that would get you arrested if you brought it to an airport; but a slightly more polished variant could be squirreled away in quite a few places. The volume and power required to implement an entire single-purpose attacker device is already fairly small, getting into "eh, probably just one of those EMI ferrite things" territory, and not going to get any larger; plus the options available in either embedding the attacker device in the case of a legitimate device or modifying a legitimate device's firmware.
The truly paranoid user might not be vulnerable; but few users are paranoid enough to qualify.
I'm frankly surprised to hear that Apple still manufactures a device that will boot after you tinker with its boot ROM. The notion that a device that is, for most purposes, right on the PCIe bus can scribble all over the place isn't exactly a shock; but it doesn't seem much like Apple to build hardware that would still boot if the cryptographic signatures didn't check out.
Chernobyl virus victim checking in. $450 in hardware to fix that one.....
Good-bye
Pfft, of course they are better screws. They are both more expensive and annoying to operate, just like other Apple Iproducts.
iScrew
Only meant to be used by the special Apple certified screwdriver, the iScrewyou.
...
With older (PPC?) based Macs, to update the firmware you had to power off the machine, then turn it on by holding the power button until you got an extra beep or sound. This would physically un-write-protect the firmware EPROM so that it could be updated by open firmware.
In their quest to make everything as "user friendly" as possible, they took out this hardware security feature, allowing the update to just happen without any physical action.
Bad Apple, no donut.
While this is true, the attacker does not need physical access for this. All they need is access to an innocent user who can be convinced to plug something in.
The FBI and secret service demonstrated this type of attack back in the early 2000s. They dropped usb drives near banks night drop boxes and front doors that pinged a server with the local ip and machine name and wrote a file locally when plugged in with the autorun on. Something like 70% or so pinged. People where plugging them in to try to figure out who's they were to return them.
Its pretty easy to convince someone to plug something in.
No one uses thunderbolt for mice.