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With no easy way to revoke compromised keys, MSI, and its customers, are in a real pickle:
A ransomware intrusion on hardware manufacturer Micro-Star International, better known as MSI, is stoking concerns of devastating supply chain attacks that could inject malicious updates that have been signed with company signing keys that are trusted by a huge base of end-user devices, a researcher said.
"It's kind of like a doomsday scenario where it's very hard to update the devices simultaneously, and they stay for a while not up to date and will use the old key for authentication," Alex Matrosov, CEO, head of research and founder of security firm Binarly, said in an interview. "It's very hard to solve, and I don't think MSI has any backup solution to actually block the leaked keys."
The intrusion came to light in April when, as first reported by Bleeping Computer, the extortion portal of the Money Message ransomware group listed MSI as a new victim and published screenshots purporting to show folders containing private encryption keys, source code, and other data. A day later, MSI issued a terse advisory saying that it had "suffered a cyberattack on part of its information systems." The advisory urged customers to get updates from the MSI website only. It made no mention of leaked keys.
Since then, Matrosov has analyzed data that was released on the Money Message site on the dark web. To his alarm, included in the trove were two private encryption keys. The first is the signing key that digitally signs MSI firmware updates to cryptographically prove that they are legitimate ones from MSI rather than a malicious impostor from a threat actor.
This raises the possibility that the leaked key could push out updates that would infect a computer's most nether regions without triggering a warning. To make matters worse, Matrosov said, MSI doesn't have an automated patching process the way Dell, HP, and many larger hardware makers do. Consequently, MSI doesn't provide the same kind of key revocation capabilities.
"It's very bad, it doesn't frequently happen," he said. "They need to pay a lot of attention to this incident because there are very serious security implications here."
Adding to the concern, MSI to date has maintained radio silence on the matter. Company representatives didn't respond to emails seeking comment and asking if the company planned to issue guidance to its customers.
[...] Whatever the difficulty, possession of the signing key MSI uses to cryptographically verify the authenticity of its installer files significantly lowers the effort and resources required to pull off an effective supply chain attack.
"The worst scenario is if the attackers gain not only access to the keys but also can distribute this malicious update [using those keys]," Matrosov said.
In an advisory, the Netherlands-based National Cybersecurity Center didn't rule out the possibility.
"Because successful abuse is technically complex and in principle requires local access to a vulnerable system, the NCSC considers the risk of abuse to be small," NCSC officials wrote.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday May 12, @01:42PM (11 children)
⠀
The anti vax hysteria didn't stop, it just died down.
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Friday May 12, @02:00PM
That was my first thought. Unless they're lying, and it's actually something that was physically copied via USB because they didn't adequately secure the computers containing the keys from people that shouldn't have them.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday May 12, @02:00PM (3 children)
Correct. Keys were ripe for the taking to the first infiltrator.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday May 12, @02:03PM (2 children)
They went on about how they couldn't be revoked, like Dell was a shining example for something. I'm not certain that being able to revoke the key(s) would have been better/good. Would be nice, if there was some sort of plan for this issue, though.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 4, Funny) by DannyB on Friday May 12, @02:16PM
Even if singing keys can't be revoked, they could transpose to a different singing key more suitable to the vocal range of the PC.
The anti vax hysteria didn't stop, it just died down.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 12, @03:15PM
So is there a list of MSI keys and certs that could have possibly been compromised? If you use Windows what you'll have to do is add all of them to the appropriate repository in order to blacklist them. You can't just delete them because the way Windows works is it'll auto add the stuff on demand if it's signed by a trusted publisher/root.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Friday May 12, @03:20PM (5 children)
Exactly!
The fact that MSI didn't treat those keys like the crown jewels makes them criminally negligent AND demonstrates without the shadow of a doubt that they're fucking incompetent.
I hope this ends in a class-action lawsuit and they lose, because they deserve to have their ass handed to them, to teach them a lesson and let it be a lesson for everybody else.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday May 12, @03:38PM
Customers may simply lose trust in their brand. Trust is easy to lose and difficult to earn.
These singing keys are the first or even zero'th level defense against malware.
The anti vax hysteria didn't stop, it just died down.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by RamiK on Friday May 12, @04:30PM (2 children)
I'm sure if you'll read the fine print you'll find MSI never made any security-related guarantees when providing you with their motherboards.
In fact, secure boot isn't there to provide security for you. It's there to provide DRM through a verifiable execution chain similar to what SafetyNet provides on Android. So, at most, you get to ask a refund from the game company which *might* get to sue the company that provided with the anti-piracy/cheat library which, in-turn, *might* get to sue Intel for not fulfilling whatever which, in-turn, *might* get to sue MSI for failing to uphold to whatever.
Welcome to the wonderful world of "security".
compiling...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by darkfeline on Friday May 12, @06:56PM (1 child)
If you keep in mind the fact that things like rooting and jailbreaking are exactly the same as exploiting security vulnerabilities, you can see this as an opportunity to take back full control of your hardware. I expected Soylentils would support this outcome.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 4, Touché) by RamiK on Friday May 12, @08:06PM
Rooting doesn't exploit any security vulnerabilities. Many manufacturers provide the tools to unlock the bootloader on their website ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootloader_unlocking#Android [wikipedia.org] ) and SuperSu and Magisk are just fancy GUIs around su (sudo) that have installers that make sure the various selinux policies and such are setup correctly. The end result is simply you being able to elevate the privilege of certain apps to ring 0.
Anyhow, I'm pretty sure most if not all of MSI's motherboards already let users disable the secure boot or even install their own keys (so you can setup your PC to only boot bootloaders and kernels you yourself compiled and signed).
compiling...
(Score: 2, Interesting) by digitalaudiorock on Friday May 12, @05:53PM
After I built the machine I'm using now with an ASRock X570 PHANTOM GAMING 4 motherboard, I had several people online tell me that ASRock was crap and also recommended MSI. For what it's worth the ASRock has been really solid, and I'm liking the decision even more after this debacle. Horrible.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Rich on Friday May 12, @05:01PM (3 children)
When "doomsday" is the alternative, the cost of having a hardware jumper (or even an EPROM swap) to be set for firmware updates seems low. It's just corporate rollouts which are used to justify this crap, and they could get away with a PIN to be entered, hidden behind the firmware password. Updates are stored in the "backup" area of the flash and on boot, the PIN is asked for. If the PIN is wrong, the system halts, or on non-urgent cases continues with the old firmware. Only if the correct PIN is given, the "backup" and "main" area of the flash are swapped. After a grace period, the new firmware may overwrite the old one as backup.
On the other hand, (theoretically) being able to disable the ME and SMM backdoors more than weighs up the risk, especially if you're running a fully open OS where you'll have to try hard to catch a malware to overwrite your boot flash.
(Score: 3, Troll) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Friday May 12, @06:52PM (2 children)
People who modded you up didn't even read what you wrote.
This isn't about secure boot, or recovering a bricked device, or even remote control of stuff the legitimate user is locked out of.
This is about signing a software update package. Of course only the valid distributor of the software - or in this case, firmware - is going to sign the software and keep the private key to themselves. Windows does it for their OS upgrades, Apple does it, Google does it, every Linux distro and every Linux package maintainer does it. It's perfectly normal, it's perfectly okay, this is what cryptographic signing is about.
The issue here is that MSI has lost their private key: anybody can create a firmware upgrade package that existing firmwares already deployed will accept as legit. This is the issue, and it has NOTHING TO DO WITH WITH WHAT YOU'RE RANTING ABOUT.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Rich on Friday May 12, @07:56PM
They read what I wrote, and this IS about secure boot. From TFA:
"This raises the possibility that the leaked key could push out updates that would infect a computer’s most nether regions without triggering a warning. "
"Compounding the threat, the Money Message hackers also acquired a private encryption key used in a version of the Intel Boot Guard that MSI distributes to its customers. "
And from https://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/central-libraries/us/en/documents/below-the-os-security-white-paper.pdf [intel.com]
"Intel Boot Guard provides a key element of hardware-based boot integrity that meets the Microsoft Windows requirements for UEFI Secure Boot to mitigate unauthorized BIOS boot block modifications."
I read this as being able to get control of the entire boot chain with the keys. However, I will stand corrected if there's a Flashrom solution to directly install Coreboot for all the involved MSI boards that leaves the (CS)ME cold and doesn't install any negative ring crap. Bonus points if that solution provides enough TPM attestation to play games and streaming videos in HD.
(Score: 2) by rpnx on Saturday May 13, @05:31PM
Why are you copy-pasting this bullshit on multiple replies.
If you're going to shill, at least post a reasoned comment that considers the issues. oh... then it would be obvious that you are wrong. Carry on I guess.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by rpnx on Friday May 12, @05:06PM (3 children)
Keys should be user replaceable. Even if it requires a soldering iron, the tools to do so should be readily available to the public.
Manufacturers have been engaged in anticompetitive tivoization for a while, with the justification being security. But now that they failed at security, the tivoization is making the devices less secure since the keys cannot be replaced.
I think on a fundamental level, secure boot is good. But the keys should be replaceable by anyone with physical access to the motherboard. I think a good solution would be something like an SDCard slot that stores the bootloader/firmware and public signing keys. Basically a bootcard. The bootcard could be removed and the contents checked for malware easily. As it stands now, it's nearly impossible to check motherboards for rootkits. A secret store chip that erases encryption keys and requires a full reset when firmware keys are changed should be a sufficient safeguard against data exfiltration, while still allowing devices with compromised master keys to be updated to secure keys easily.
(Score: 2) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Friday May 12, @06:56PM (2 children)
People who modded you up didn't even read what you wrote.
This isn't about the user being able to replace stuff, anticompetitive behavior, tivoization or any of that stuff.
This is about signing a software update package. Of course only the valid distributor of the software - or in this case, firmware - is going to sign the software and keep the private key to themselves. Windows does it for their OS upgrades, Apple does it, Google does it, every Linux distro and every Linux package maintainer does it. It's perfectly normal, it's perfectly okay, this is what cryptographic signing is about.
The issue here is that MSI has lost their private key: anybody can create a firmware upgrade package that existing firmwares already deployed will accept as legit. This is the issue, and it has NOTHING TO DO WITH WITH WHAT YOU'RE RANTING ABOUT.
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 13, @05:06AM
Did Boss Hogg spike your drink again or are you just losing your mind?
(Score: 2) by rpnx on Saturday May 13, @05:25PM
I think you didn't grasp the broader point I was making. Your focus is too narrow to the particular circumstances. Because of tivoization, the compromised key cannot be replaced by the consumer. My point here is that this case serves as an example that the "security" justification for tivoization is bullshit. A bootcard would allow the consumer to sign the firmware. Allowing the consumer to control the firmware is the right action since manufacturer's controlling the firmware as it stands now is a form of anticompetitive tivoization.
Since you seem to be woefully uninformed, tivoization is the practice of designing devices that do not allow the consumer to change which public keys are accepted by the device as valid. The only circumstances in which it would not be tivoization is if the firmware signing is solely enforced by the OS and not the hardware, and the boot process to select the OS is not itself tivoized (thus tivoized by transitive relation). My understanding from the article is that MSI motherboards would not load firmware unless it is signed by them. You could make the argument that firmware tivoization is different from full OS tivoization, but tivoization it is nonetheless.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Friday May 12, @05:56PM
It was bound to happen eventually. When this was first mooted (UEFI secure boot and signing keys), people did say it would all end in tears and now look.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].