Apple EFI Firmware Security Vulnerabilities

by SpaceInvader • 12 years ago

150 51 12 years ago

fubarred• 12 years ago

Wanted:

- "Tripwire" for firmware - host-based (not perfect) & bootable live cd/usb/image (still not perfect)... Perhaps some JTAG verifying device that could be hard-wired to all supported chips directly? (Very painful to setup, but potentially interesting.)

- Host-based peripheral firewall (not perfect, but more usable) - e.g.: selectively disable, ask user permission and/or limit rights to connecting devices from the various buses: USB, FW, PCI, SD card, SATA/SAS, BT, TB, SPI, FC, ... On OSX, it's doable considering VMware Fusion "patches" IOKit (check out IORegistryExplorer) selectively based on user preferences (whether to redirect a USB device to a guest or to the host).

makomk2• 12 years ago

In some cases, it's not possible to have a "Tripwire" equivalent for firmware. For example, Intel's Management Engine on modern chipsets runs code from a firmware region that's read-protected against access from user code.

SCHiM• 12 years ago

The second thing you mention already sort-of exists in the form of qubes os: https://qubes-os.org/

userbinator5• 12 years ago

Remember when BIOS flash ROMs were write-protected with a physical hardware switch/jumper? It was an extremely simple measure that basically made it impossible for the BIOS to be corrupted by software, malicious or otherwise.

It was certainly "inconvenient" to perform BIOS updates, but back in those days BIOS updates weren't all that common either. I don't think it should ever be "convenient" to do something like that with basic system firmware - by its very nature, it is supposed to be stable and rarely changed. Somehow this is making me terribly nostalgic... for the days when BIOSes seemed far less buggy and in need of constant change. Now, I hear stories of laptops with factory-installed crap that silently updates the BIOS in the background(!), bricking the machine when something else unfortunate happens coincidentally with it (e.g. hard reset.) I remember the ritual of "boot from a floppy to a plain DOS prompt, run the updater, and wait for a few tense seconds as it updated the BIOS".

The mention of "Thunderbolt Option ROM" makes it clear that Thunderbolt is basically an external version of PCI(e). In other words, even without being able to modify any firmware, plenty of other maliciousness is already possible - the same with any other device that has direct access to the system bus. In the same way that you probably wouldn't plug a random untrusted PCI(e) adapter into your system, you should exercise the same caution with Thunderbolt...

mattstocum2• 12 years ago

Macs used to require a physical step in addition to the software setup to modify the boot ROM. I think it was something along the lines of load firmware update which initiates a reboot, after reboot press and hold the power button until there was a loud beep from the computer, then the firmware update could proceed. Not convenient, but more secure.

aroch• 12 years ago

That's resetting the PRAM and was required on old macs for some of the fimrware changes to actually take place (since the firmware was cached).

foxhill2• 12 years ago

Remember when BIOS flash ROMs were write-protected with a physical hardware switch/jumper?

this is a physical access attack. when you have physical access, the game is up. (and your bios switch isn't any use).

i appreciate that inserting a thunderbolt device is easier than getting access to a switch, but it's not that much harder.

pascal_cuoq• 12 years ago

NO!

Summarizing as “when you have physical access, the game is up” is the same as saying that employees who pick up abandoned USB thumbdrives on parking lots and plug them into work computers are guilty.

Plugging things in are what Thunderbolt/USB ports are FOR. This is how you transmit data and how you extend the computer with new peripherals. It may be impossible to prevent a Thunderbolt or USB peripheral from bricking the computer, but that doing so can end up giving control of it to a third party is an unacceptable security failure, is not the user's fault, and needs to be fixed.

A physical hardware switch located inside the box would be quite appropriate. Everyone knows that you don't need to open the computer to read from an external drive.

rasz_pl2• 12 years ago

Remember when BIOS flash ROMs were write-protected with a physical hardware switch/jumper?

Remember how that was only for a short 1-2 years as a knee jerk reaction to CIH virus?

Older PCs had bios in EPROM (UV window on the chip) instead of EEPROM. That was the only physical protection. Later Intel introduced firmware hub (FWH) with software protection against flashing (you had to unlock certain memory region/io access), then we got SPI flash chips with some copy protection (again software controlled).

Jumper was a short lived, useless (after the fact) feature that died because nobody needed/wanted/asked for it.

weinzierl• 12 years ago

I'm not sure if the jumpers were meant as a malware protection.

    [...] make it impossible for the BIOS to be corrupted 
    by software, malicious or otherwise

The jumper could enable the erase voltage for the flash. On the other hand it could also just pull up or down a pin that is queried before the flash routine does its work. For example one Intel Mobo manual[1] says explicitly the jumper protects from accidental corruption.

    Jumper JP4 controls the protection scheme that
    prevents accidental damage to or rewriting of the data
    stored in Flash memory.[1]

[1] http://www.manualslib.com/manual/77721/Intel-Iwill-P4d-N.htm...

userbinator5• 12 years ago

That is an interesting example of a hybrid protection scheme - you get to choose between "software decides", "always protected", and "always unprotected". Given that the jumper is located right next to the flash, I'm inclined to believe this is a true hardware protection; likely the middle pin is connected to the write-enable of the flash, the left pin is connected to a GPIO so the software can control it, and the right pin is connected to a constant voltage to disable any writing via hardware. The open position leaves the pin free to allow writes.

amluto2• 12 years ago

the larger issue of Apple's EFI firmware security and secure booting with no trusted hardware is more difficult to fix.

IMO this shouldn't really be a problem. If the SPI payload disables writes before executing anything unsigned, then it's really quite hard to bypass.

Presumably the bug is a result of EFI capsule on disk support. The design is sh*t for exactly this reason.

The firmware could lock the flash, detect the capsule after initializing option ROMs, copy it to RAM, do a full reset, then find the capsule in RAM and verify a signature prior to re-locking the flash, though.

walterbell3• 12 years ago

http://theinvisiblethings.blogspot.ca/2011/09/anti-evil-maid...

"Anti Evil Maid is an implementation of a TPM-based static trusted boot with a primary goal to prevent Evil Maid attacks.

The adjective trusted, in trusted boot, means that the goal of the mechanism is to somehow attest to a user that only desired (trusted) components have been loaded and executed during the system boot. It's a common mistake to confuse it with what is sometimes called secure boot, whose purpure is to prevent any unauthorized component from executing."

sitkack• 12 years ago

I was just coming here to say I would pay money for a pre-rootkit-rootkit. Someone has to get there first and it might as well be my own code.

walterbell3• 12 years ago

http://puri.sm

"The first high-end laptop that respects your freedom and privacy. The Purism Librem 15 is the first laptop in the world that ships without mystery software in the kernel, operating system, or any software applications."

rwmj• 12 years ago

What CPU does it use? Does it need microcode?

Interesting thread on exactly how free this laptop is: https://trisquel.info/en/forum/librem-15-freelibre-and-open-...

(Edit: This post seems a bit harsh. My view is that any movement towards a more free laptop is welcome, especially since things like Android are going rapidly in the opposite direction)

zanny• 12 years ago

You just won't get a blobless AMD or Intel computer. Intel for the chipset and CPU, AMD for the GPU firmware.

And ARM is worse, since a majority of the ARM ecosystem just acts like bootloaders and their gpu drivers don't even exist.

rasz_pl2• 12 years ago

i7-4770HQ

haha

Intel cant even get rid of binary blobs from their official open source Atom platform (minnowboard).

Intel UEFI bios is >100K lines of hand tuned spaghetti code that never saw version control system, thats straight from the mouth of Intel employee.

bjackman• 12 years ago

Actually Intel run EDK2/Tianocore, the open-source "reference implementation" of UEFI. Its core functionality is pretty good quality, but the repo is huge and there's a lot of junk in there. Actual motherboards usually run (closed) forks of it.

RexRollman• 12 years ago

I know that legacy BIOS has its issues, but from what I have seen and read, EFI/UEFI is a quagmire.

userbinator5• 12 years ago

The Gluglug (http://shop.gluglug.org.uk/product/ibm-lenovo-thinkpad-x60-c... ), basically a Thinkpad X60 with Coreboot, beat them to "first laptop in the world" (PC-compatible, at least), but maybe not "first high-end laptop". I think there's optional non-free microcode updates that might be useful, but it can definitely run 100% blob-free.

listic• 12 years ago

Thanks for the link. Who are the guys behind this?

walterbell3• 12 years ago

Purism CEO is Todd Weaver, he has posted on the Qubes list, https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!topic/qubes-users/WX1IXB... where he responded to feedback by changing the motherboard design to increase max RAM and add a CPU with an IOMMU.

sounds• 12 years ago

I see you asked here as well [1]. Todd (the founder) answered some questions at Ars Technica: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/11/crowdf...

Do you need more than what he says there?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8779973

cnvogel3• 12 years ago

Out of curiosity: Can anyone point me where to find how a recent x86-cpu actually boots? Where's the code that gets executed in the first few CPU cycles?

The bulk of the firmware, that's clear, nowadays will be fetched from a serially connected flash, which this initial code will copy to the (then initialized) DRAM, also probably in several stages. But where do the first few instructions hide? Mask-rom in the CPU, or the chipset?

I know how initial bootup works on my day-job-default-CPU (a m68k/coldfire that basically just starts executing from a parallel connected flash), on a few ARMs and some PPC, but I have no idea about a "typical" intel core/i5..7/... CPU.

userbinator5• 12 years ago

The first "code" would probably be microcode in the CPU itself, but if you mean x86 instructions, recent CPUs boot in the same way as the orginal 8086: the first instruction after a reset is fetched from FFFF:FFF0, or 16 bytes less than the end of memory, in realmode. The BIOS ROM is mapped into this area.

There are some good articles here:

https://sites.google.com/site/pinczakko/

cnvogel3• 12 years ago

the first instruction after a reset is fetched from FFFF:FFF0

I trust you that this logically will certainly be true, but: what memory will that access to ffff:fff0 be mapped to if the "bios" in my PC is stored in a SPI flash that certainly can't be connected directly to anything resembling a "address/data-bus" in a modern PC...

tryp2• 12 years ago

The best place to look is probably Coreboot. It's the boot firmware used by Google Chromebooks. (Github mirror links used here for politeness to the project's servers.) Taking Intel Haswell processors as an example (because I know this code path) we can sketch the general process.

Start at 0xfffffff0, the boot vector for x86, executing in 16-bit "I can run DOS 1.0" mode. https://github.com/coreboot/coreboot/blob/master/src/cpu/x86...

It just jumps to the entry to 32-bit mode https://github.com/coreboot/coreboot/blob/master/src/cpu/x86...

Turn on FPU https://github.com/coreboot/coreboot/blob/master/src/cpu/x86...

Turn on SSE https://github.com/coreboot/coreboot/blob/master/src/cpu/x86...

Configure the cache not to require a backing DRAM so that it can be used temporarily as RAM. https://github.com/coreboot/coreboot/blob/master/src/cpu/int...

Now that "RAM" is available for use as a stack, the next steps can be written in plain-ole C https://github.com/coreboot/coreboot/blob/master/src/cpu/int...

From there, mainboard-specific code sets up things like which SuperIO chip to configure, the i2c addresses to interrogate for information on RAM geometry and timing, and how the chipset is wired to connectors on the board. Commong chipset (northbridge and southbridge) init code is run using that configuration data. https://github.com/coreboot/coreboot/blob/master/src/mainboa...

Then DRAM is initialized (the Haswell example is a bit lame in that currently a binary blob of compiled code from Intel does this job.) The Sandybridge DDR3 init was recently reverse-engineered and re-implemented and fully exemplifies the training processes required. https://github.com/coreboot/coreboot/blob/master/src/northbr...

Now that Gigagbytes of RAM are available, another boot stage is fetched from flash. When generic framework gets back to cpu-specific stuff, power management is configured,Inter-Processor Interrupt handlers are installed, and other cores go through a quick init sequence. https://github.com/coreboot/coreboot/blob/master/src/cpu/int...

Then essentially the PCI tree is walked to setup all the chipset devices. https://github.com/coreboot/coreboot/tree/master/src/southbr...

Once hardware is running, Coreboot loads a "payload" that is in turn responsible for loading the OS.

pgeorgi• 12 years ago

That's a really neat walk-through - mind if I put it on the coreboot wiki? And how do you want attribution to look like?

abhv• 12 years ago

Can their be an external IO port that is both (a) fast and (b) access limited?

-- BadUSB shows that the USB controller can fake keystrokes, modify the recipient USB controller, etc.

-- This attack now shows an even more dangerous attack that can be mounted by a malicious thunderbolt adapter (the one that you unknowingly connected by habit at a conference, say).

Trammell is giving a longer talk about this work at CCC next week. (http://events.ccc.de/congress/2014/Fahrplan/events/6128.html)

The attack is implemented (he has a demo macbook with "ThunderStruck" bootloader), and it has been disclosed to apple >400 days ago.

One aspect of the attack can be patched with 2-byte change, but apparently apple hasn't bothered.

jzwinck• 12 years ago

Can their be an external IO port that is both (a) fast and (b) access limited?

Yes. eSATA is one example. 10 gigabit Ethernet is another. DisplayPort is, for certain applications.

markbnj2• 12 years ago

Curious as to why the title is "EFI Firmware Security" and not "Apple EFI Firmware Security," which is the title of the piece linked?

wmf• 12 years ago

Do we have reason to believe that non-Apple implementations are any better?

Most non-Apple computers don't have an external PCI bus, so there's that.

markbnj2• 12 years ago

No, not necessarily, and yet the article was specifically about an Apple exploit. Just seemed off to omit that from the post title.

dang• 12 years ago

No idea, but we changed it to agree with the article.

betafive• 12 years ago

Has anyone looked at using VTd to secure Thunderbolt devices from the system bus?

amluto2• 12 years ago

That wouldn't help. This attack happens long before the OS loads, and EFI explicitly executes code from the option ROM, so DMA isn't even involved.

dominicgs• 12 years ago

I believe that the two year old Option ROM vulnerability to which this post refers was this one described by Loukas(snare) at Black Hat and Ruxcon 2012: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcFvgAsfdqg

Although I may be wrong, it's certainly a related vulnerability and an interesting presentation to watch. Skip to ~54mins if you just want to see the demo.

georgyo• 12 years ago

What I find most incredible about this is that apple has been told about this over and over again for the past 600 days, and did nothing would be the bigger issue.

I have watched Trammel demonstrate this attach right in front of me about a year ago. Apple has repeatedly ignored the fact that they are vulnerable.

It should also be noted that while this talk is Apple focused, it not a Apple thunderbolt specific attack. It affects all badly implemented thunderbolt ports.

Apple's growing popularity and strong hardware standardization makes them especially susceptible to the wormificaiton of this attack. How many offices have a supply cabinet with thunderbolt to HDMI/Ethernet/other connectors that are shared around the office freely?

pix64• 12 years ago

Would it be possible to create a virtual thunderbolt port similar to virtual cd/dvd drives? and if so would that be vulnerable?

Apple EFI Firmware Security Vulnerabilities

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