One of the things that set Macs apart from most other computers is the Thunderbolt port. It can be used for displays, networking, storage among other things both individually or at the same time. It’s very versatile. Sadly, it seems it can be used for one other purpose. Someone could use a modified Thunderbolt device to take over your MacBook:
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 is possible to use a Thunderbolt Option ROM to circumvent the cryptographic signature checks in Apple’s EFI firmware update routines,” Hudson said in the description of his upcoming presentation. “This allows an attacker with physical access to the machine to write untrusted code to the SPI flash ROM on the motherboard and creates a new class of firmware bootkits for the MacBook systems.”
Malicious code installed in the MacBook boot ROM will be executed before the OS is loaded, meaning it can patch the OS kernel and have complete control over the system. It also means that reinstalling Mac OS X will not remove the bootkit and neither will replacing the hard disk drive, because the malicious code is not stored on it.
For this to work, the attacker either has to have physical access to your MacBook, or they could plant something in a Thunderbolt device. The latter is very sneaky. There’s one more thing:
The bootkit can even replace Apple’s cryptographic key stored in the ROM with one generated by the attacker, preventing any future legitimate firmware updates from Apple, the researcher said in a blog post.
Firmware updates are supposed to be signed, but the vulnerability exploited by this attack allows that mechanism to be bypassed.
That’s a massive problem. When this gets presented at the Chaos Communication Congress, Apple is going to have a fair amount of explaining to do. Hopefully, they are paying attention and quickly roll out fixes to protect their users.
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This entry was posted on December 24, 2014 at 6:49 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Apple, Security. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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MacBooks Vulnerable To Being Taken Over Via Thunderbolt
One of the things that set Macs apart from most other computers is the Thunderbolt port. It can be used for displays, networking, storage among other things both individually or at the same time. It’s very versatile. Sadly, it seems it can be used for one other purpose. Someone could use a modified Thunderbolt device to take over your MacBook:
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 is possible to use a Thunderbolt Option ROM to circumvent the cryptographic signature checks in Apple’s EFI firmware update routines,” Hudson said in the description of his upcoming presentation. “This allows an attacker with physical access to the machine to write untrusted code to the SPI flash ROM on the motherboard and creates a new class of firmware bootkits for the MacBook systems.”
Malicious code installed in the MacBook boot ROM will be executed before the OS is loaded, meaning it can patch the OS kernel and have complete control over the system. It also means that reinstalling Mac OS X will not remove the bootkit and neither will replacing the hard disk drive, because the malicious code is not stored on it.
For this to work, the attacker either has to have physical access to your MacBook, or they could plant something in a Thunderbolt device. The latter is very sneaky. There’s one more thing:
The bootkit can even replace Apple’s cryptographic key stored in the ROM with one generated by the attacker, preventing any future legitimate firmware updates from Apple, the researcher said in a blog post.
Firmware updates are supposed to be signed, but the vulnerability exploited by this attack allows that mechanism to be bypassed.
That’s a massive problem. When this gets presented at the Chaos Communication Congress, Apple is going to have a fair amount of explaining to do. Hopefully, they are paying attention and quickly roll out fixes to protect their users.
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This entry was posted on December 24, 2014 at 6:49 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Apple, Security. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.