Security | DMA | Hacking

macOS FileVault2 let attackers with physical access retrieve the password in clear text by plugging in a $300 Thunderbolt device into a locked or sleeping mac. The password may be used to unlock the mac to access everything on it. To secure your mac just update it with the December 2016 patches. Anyone including, but not limited to, your colleagues, the police, the evil maid and the thief will have full access to your data as long as they can gain physical access - unless the mac is completely shut down. If the mac is sleeping it is still vulnerable. Just stroll up to a locked mac, plug in the Thunderbolt device, force a reboot (ctrl+cmd+power) and wait for the password to be displayed in less than 30 seconds! Check out the demo video below: How is this possible? At the very core of this issue there are two separate issues. The first issue is that the mac does not protect itself against Direct Memory Access (DMA) attacks before macOS is started. EFI which is running at this early stage...

I just got an Intel NUC Skull Canyon that has an USB-C port capable of Thunderbolt 3. Thunderbolt is interesting since it's able to carry PCI Express which is Direct Memory Access (DMA) capable. I have previously demonstrated how it is possible to DMA-attack macs over Thunderbolt 2 in my DEF CON talk "Direct Memory Attack the Kernel". To attack my MacBook Air in the DEF CON demo I used a Sonnet Echo ExpressCard Thunderbolt 2 to ExpressCard adapter together with a PCILeech ExpressCard. I also got a Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 adapter from Startech and I wanted to try it on the NUC to see if it's possible to use it for DMA attacks, or if Thunderbolt has been secured. The setup looks like this: NUC ->  Startech TB3 to TB2 adapter ->  Sonnet TB2 to ExpressCard adapter ->  PCILeech ExpressCard. There exists a BIOS setting for the Thunderbolt Security Level. The default setting is Unique ID . The other possible security levels are Legacy Mode , One time sa...