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New Exploit Leaves Most Macs Vulnerable to Permanent Backdooring

posted by janrinok on Tuesday June 02 2015, @07:29PM   
from the no-such-thing-as-a-secure-computer dept.

n1 writes:

Ars Technica reports:

Macs older than a year are vulnerable to exploits that remotely overwrite the firmware that boots up the machine, a feat that allows attackers to control vulnerable devices from the very first instruction.

The attack, according to a blog post published Friday by well-known OS X security researcher Pedro Vilaca, affects Macs shipped prior to the middle of 2014 that are allowed to go into sleep mode. He found a way to reflash a Mac's BIOS using functionality contained in userland, which is the part of an operating system where installed applications and drivers are executed. By exploiting vulnerabilities such as those regularly found in Safari and other Web browsers, attackers can install malicious firmware that survives hard drive reformatting and reinstallation of the operating system.

[Editor's Comment: The Ars Technica headline has been changed on their site to remove the word 'remote'. They note that "the hack involves use of a local exploit."]

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Original Submission

• Thinking hackintosh is vulnerable too Thinking hackintosh is vulnerable too (Score: 4, Informative) by zeigerpuppy on Tuesday June 02 2015, @09:34PM

  by zeigerpuppy (1298) on Tuesday June 02 2015, @09:34PM (#191281)

  This exploits a hole in the S3 suspend/resume
  Good discussion here https://reverse.put.as/2015/05/29/the-empire-strikes-back-apple-how-your-mac-firmware-security-is-completely-broken/ [reverse.put.as]

  Looks like it needs root to rewrite the bios but this would be quite nasty.
  Will be interesting to see if it's in the wild.

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• Re:Thinking hackintosh is vulnerable too (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday June 03 2015, @01:00PM

  by FatPhil (863) <reversethis-{if.fdsa} {ta} {tnelyos-cp}> on Wednesday June 03 2015, @01:00PM (#191562) Homepage

  Fortunately there's no such thing as a local privilege escalation exploit.
  And even better, there's no such thing as remote arbitrary code execution exploits either.

  --
  Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves

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