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On Tue, May 12, 2020 at 05:36:07PM -0700, Brendan Hoar wrote:
> On Tuesday, May 12, 2020 at 8:01:50 PM UTC-4, Marek Marczykowski-Górecki 
> wrote:
> >
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> >
> > On Tue, May 12, 2020 at 06:22:50AM -0700, bradbury9 wrote: 
> > > Looks like a new evil maid attack [1][2] that takes advantage of the 
> > > thunderbolt port is on the wild. 
> > > 
> > > I do recall Qubes OS had anti evil maid features. I wonder, are Qubes OS 
> > > protected against this new attack? 
> > > 
> > > [1]: 
> > https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/05/attack_against_2.html 
> > > [2]: 
> > https://www.wired.com/story/thunderspy-thunderbolt-evil-maid-hacking/ 
> >
> > In theory, my answer would be "IOMMU isolates Thunderbolt devices, so it 
> > isn't a concern". But unfortunately practice can far from it: 
> >
> > 1. As mentioned in the advisory, effective IOMMU isolation for 
> > Thunderbolt is available in hardware produced in 2019+ only. 
> >
> > 2. Configuring IOMMU for hot-pluggable devices is generally racy. 
> >
> > In Qubes we do disable PCI hotplug handling in kernel, but that's only a 
> > small obstacle for the attacker, in many cases bypassable 
> > - - unless proper IOMMU configuration is applied at the right time, in 
> > many cases device can access host memory even if no driver is loaded 
> > for it. 
> >
> > So, my advice would be to disable Thunderbolt until further notice. 
> >
> 
> Hmm...
> 
> Well, if the attack requires that the thunderbolt chipset firmware be 
> compromised via *physical attack*, I suppose the attacker would also 
> compromise the UEFI/BIOS firmware during the physical attack, leaving the 
> UEFI/BIOS showing the device disabled, but...really, leaving it active 
> enough for attack.

In case of many laptops, OEMs enable BootGuard, which detects UEFI/BIOS
modifications (and also prevents installing coreboot at the same time).
So, this isn't that easy. UEFI/BIOS is quite complex piece of code, so
it's quite possible to find some bug that allows attack it a different
way. But it isn't as easy as directly modify it on the flash.

- -- 
Best Regards,
Marek Marczykowski-Górecki
Invisible Things Lab
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
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