Firewire threat to FDE

[Hagai Bar-El]

Hello,

As if the latest research (which showed that RAM contents can be 
recovered after power-down) was not enough, it seems as Firewire ports 
can form yet an easier attack vector into FDE-locked laptops.

Windows hacked in seconds via Firewire
http://www.techworld.com/security/news/index.cfm?RSS&NewsID=11615

        The attack takes advantage of the fact that Firewire can
        directly read and write to a system's memory, adding extra speed
        to data transfer.

IIUC, the tool mentioned only bypasses the Win32 unlock screen, but 
given the free access to RAM, exploit code that digs out FDE keys is a 
matter of very little extra work.

This is nothing new. The concept was presented a couple of years ago, 
but I haven't seen most FDE enthusiasts disable their Firewire ports yet.

Unsurprisingly:

        Microsoft downplayed the problem, noting that the Firewire
        attack is just one of many that could be carried out if an
        attacker already has physical access to the system.

        "The claims [...] are not software vulnerabilities,
        but reflect a hardware design industry issue that affects
        multiple operating systems," Bill Sisk, Microsoft's security
        response communications manager, told Techworld.

It is not *their* fault, but being a company that pretends to take 
users' security seriously, and being at a position that allows them to 
block this attack vector elegantly, I would have gone that extra 
half-mile rather than come up with excuses why not to fix it. All they 
need to do is make sure (through a user-controlled but default-on 
feature) that when the workstation is locked, new Firewire or PCMCIA 
devices cannot be introduced. That hard?

Hagai.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
The Cryptography Mailing List
Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]