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BlankSystemDaemon
Mar 13, 2009



Cybernetic Vermin posted:

yeah, in principle there can be malware in the uefi firmware or bios, but as the only way to fix that is to toss the laptop and not get a new one (as the new one may have it too) it is not very helpful info. ideally do a full format and reinstall, but whatever reset-to-factory-image is offered up by hp is *probably* sufficient.

there is a lot of stuff malware *could* do to be incredibly well-hidden and persistent, but as the actual reformat is such a rare event in the life of a piece of consumer-grade malware i don't think many bother to try very hard.
Nah my friend, just solder some wires to your JTAG and flash the firmware that way :smuggo:

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Proteus Jones
Feb 28, 2013



Subjunctive posted:

Serious Hardware / Software Crap > YOSPOS > Security Fuckup Megathread v18.2 - of course it was Lenovo

graph
Nov 22, 2006

aaag peanuts
is that really better than the current tho

Winkle-Daddy
Mar 10, 2007

graph posted:

is that really better than the current tho

gonna be honest, it isn't.

jre
Sep 2, 2011

To the cloud ?



graph posted:

is that really better than the current tho

it's fresher

ymgve
Jan 2, 2004


:dukedog:
Offensive Clock

Cybernetic Vermin posted:

i originally found thompsons 'trusting trust' talk (you know the ones, the impossibility of figuring out a backdoor inserted by a compiler by source inspection), but it comes up pretty often in this kind of conversation: yeah, no poo poo, you can't trust anything. your intel-based laptop comes with three operating systems installed, and you can only have an effect on the one that is least trusted and loads last.

i peered down the rabbit hole a bit today and got pointed at https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/stage0 - a process for bootstrapping an OS install from a few hundred bytes of hand-inspectable assembly code

still, that doesn't take care of the hardware side of things - I guess the only way to be 100% sure your computer is doing what you intend it to do is to revert back to mechanical computers, like you can't even wire up a CPU from transistors or ttl components because there's a nonzero chance someone placed tiny malware in the transistor packaging

of course, this is purely academic because not even the us military is that paranoid about their hardware

Shame Boy
Mar 2, 2010

D. Ebdrup posted:

Nah my friend, just solder some wires to your JTAG and flash the firmware that way :smuggo:

what if your firmware programmer's firmware has also been compromised :colbert:

Soricidus
Oct 21, 2010
freedom-hating statist shill
if someone's going to that kind of effort to steal my shopping lists and vacation photos, then hell, they've earned them

Shame Boy
Mar 2, 2010

that started out as a joke but then I realized a bunch of firmware programming tools would probably use FTDI usb to serial chips and they're notorious for driver and firmware fuckery so i wouldn't be surprised if they accidentally pushed a bunch of malware in a driver update (or did it intentionally when asked kindly by an intelligence agency)

Soricidus
Oct 21, 2010
freedom-hating statist shill

ymgve posted:

i peered down the rabbit hole a bit today and got pointed at https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/stage0 - a process for bootstrapping an OS install from a few hundred bytes of hand-inspectable assembly code

i went reading and boy howdy this project delivers a top-notch free software experience

quote:

*** FORTH
Because a great many people stated FORTH would be an ideal bootstrapping language
the time and effort was put forth by Caleb and Jeremiah to provide a framework
for those people to contribute immediately; thus the FORTH was born.

Several efforts were taken to make the FORTH more standard but ultimately it was
determined, Assembly was preferable as the underlaying architecture wasn't total
garbage.

It now sits waiting for any FORTH programmer who wishes to prove FORTH is a real
bootstrapping language.

*** Lisp
The next recommendation in bootstrapping was Lisp, so efforts were taken to
design the most minimal Lisp with all of the functionality described in the
original Lisp papers. The task was completed relatively quickly compared to the
FORTH and even had enhancements such as a compacting garbage collector.

Ultimately it was found, the lisp that many rave about isn't entirely compatible
with modern lisps or schemes; thus was shelved for any Lisper who wishes to pick
it up.

Shame Boy
Mar 2, 2010

quote:

Today's release marks the first C compiler hand written in Assembly with structs, unions, inline assembly and the ability to self-host it's C version, which is also self-hosting

god don't you have anything more important you could be doing in your life

Chris Knight
Jun 5, 2002

me @ ur posts


Fun Shoe

graph posted:

is that really better than the current tho

nah I just wanted to show appreciation

Chris Knight
Jun 5, 2002

me @ ur posts


Fun Shoe

Soricidus posted:

i went reading and boy howdy this project delivers a top-notch free software experience

open firmware was done in forth and it was good enough for stebe

Vomik
Jul 29, 2003

This post is dedicated to the brave Mujahideen fighters of Afghanistan

Winkle-Daddy posted:

You spelled common knowledge wrong? NSA has been installing malware into HD firmware since at least 2001, and did it for 14 years undetected until that whole Kaspersky thing on equation group malware back in '15.

e: I mean, it's really rare, but HDs are cheap, just get a new one and re-install from USB. If your threat model requires you to be any more paranoid, don't buy used, I guess?

e2: a link https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/equation-hdd-malware/7623/

if you're worried the nsa installed malware into hard drive firmware then how would you get around it by buying a new hard drive

Subjunctive
Sep 12, 2006

✨sparkle and shine✨

Vomik posted:

if you're worried the nsa installed malware into hard drive firmware then how would you get around it by buying a new hard drive

you go pick it up in China

what are the odds that two state actors have tampered with it?

mystes
May 31, 2006

Also by "re-install from USB" do you mean re-install the os (which won't help against firmware malware) or re-install the firmware (which a malicious firmware will feel free to ignore)?

Subjunctive
Sep 12, 2006

✨sparkle and shine✨

you install a custom firmware which displays a nonce at boot, and then you know if it got written, maybe

mystes
May 31, 2006

I guess.

Partycat
Oct 25, 2004

maybe it’s just gonna be a god drat computer that you can use to go online and maybe don’t run your numbers station secret IRC spy ops from it if you’re that guy


which you probably aren’t

Winkle-Daddy
Mar 10, 2007

Vomik posted:

if you're worried the nsa installed malware into hard drive firmware then how would you get around it by buying a new hard drive

where do you think the firmware on the HD lives?

quote:

Let’s start with explaining what “hard drive firmware reprogramming” means. A hard drive consists of two important components – a memory medium (magnetic discs for classic HDDs or flash memory chips for SSD) and a microchip, which actually controls reading and writing to the disk, as well as many service procedures, e.g. error detection and correction. These service procedures are numerous and complex, so a chip executes its own sophisticated program and, technically speaking, this is a small computer by itself. The chip’s program is called a firmware and a hard drive vendor may want to update it, thus correcting discovered errors or improving performance.

e: afict this was not done as a supply chain attack

Winkle-Daddy fucked around with this message at 23:12 on Jun 5, 2019

Subjunctive
Sep 12, 2006

✨sparkle and shine✨

Partycat posted:

maybe it’s just gonna be a god drat computer that you can use to go online and maybe don’t run your numbers station secret IRC spy ops from it if you’re that guy


which you probably aren’t

I think he’s going to use it for work, which likely involves PII and credentials to valuable services. not likely a state target, but consequences to getting owned

mystes
May 31, 2006

Winkle-Daddy posted:

where do you think the firmware on the HD lives?
A flash chip and/or the platter but how does it make the slightest difference with respect to what we're talking about?

Winkle-Daddy
Mar 10, 2007

mystes posted:

A flash chip and/or the platter but how does it make the slightest difference with respect to what we're talking about?

because replacing the drive with a totally different one as well as re-installing the OS will remove this kind of malware as described that previously called fud?

mystes
May 31, 2006

Winkle-Daddy posted:

because replacing the drive with a totally different one as well as re-installing the OS will remove this kind of malware as described that previously called fud?
Oh I see, I misunderstood what you're saying. Yeah if you think your specific single computer was compromised in transit throw it out and get a new one at a store or whatever if you think that will protect you from the NSA.

Cocoa Crispies
Jul 20, 2001

Vehicular Manslaughter!

Pillbug

Subjunctive posted:

you install a custom firmware which displays a nonce at boot, and then you know if it got written, maybe

how’s a picture of aatrek going to help with that

Winkle-Daddy
Mar 10, 2007

mystes posted:

Oh I see, I misunderstood what you're saying. Yeah if you think your specific single computer was compromised in transit
this was not a supply chain attack

quote:

throw it out and get a new one at a store or whatever if you think that will protect you from the NSA.

you're buying a used computer from somewhere you have zero idea what the user's behavior was and if it made them a target of state surveillance for some reason. 4 years ago NSA could re-write firmware for 12 different “categories” (vendors/variations) according to the article. With the increasing complexity on the hw engineering side, this number must have gone up. knowing what we know, and how cheap drives are, you can call it fud if you want, but I'll spend the hundred bux ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This does leave me with a couple of questions though...
HD manufacturers gotta go fast and will that lead to the same bad decisions of chip makers (lol speculative execution)?
Is there going to be a temptation by HD manufacturers to basically stick an IoT computer on your HD, I have no idea how close it is to that now?

Cocoa Crispies posted:

how’s a picture of aatrek going to help with that

lmbo

Subjunctive
Sep 12, 2006

✨sparkle and shine✨

Cocoa Crispies posted:

how’s a picture of aatrek going to help with that

how is it not?

Perplx
Jun 26, 2004


Best viewed on Orgasma Plasma
Lipstick Apathy
if you encrypt your drive using your cpu you should be safe from HD firmware

mystes
May 31, 2006

Perplx posted:

if you encrypt your drive using your cpu you should be safe from HD firmware
Is this really true? I think pretty much nobody is using the TPM in a mode where it would actually protect against the hard disk inserting malicious bootloader code. I guess assuming the lack of any vulnerabilities, bitlocker can at least hopefully prevent a malicious OS from reading your data after it boots, which is something.

Also, isn't nvme just pci-e basically? Could a malicious nvme drive just read arbitrary host memory after booting?

Subjunctive
Sep 12, 2006

✨sparkle and shine✨

yeah but usually that firmware’s evil job is to drop a beachhead on the filesystem to kick off a compromise, and it can’t do that if the image is encrypted by the CPU

infernal machines
Oct 11, 2012

we monitor many frequencies. we listen always. came a voice, out of the babel of tongues, speaking to us. it played us a mighty dub.

Subjunctive posted:

I think he’s going to use it for work, which likely involves PII and credentials to valuable services. not likely a state target, but consequences to getting owned

maybe don't do that? or at least don't allow PII to touch anything outside of your own infrastructure and use 2fa for services and remote access

idk, you already know this stuff

e: by don't do that i mean don't buy used equipment for business use if this is a concern. that's probably easier than going all cloak and dagger on the system on the off chance it has some persistent malware or something

infernal machines fucked around with this message at 01:45 on Jun 6, 2019

Jabor
Jul 16, 2010

#1 Loser at SpaceChem
"Buying a new hard drive (which you were going to do anyway)" is "going all cloak and dagger"?

infernal machines
Oct 11, 2012

we monitor many frequencies. we listen always. came a voice, out of the babel of tongues, speaking to us. it played us a mighty dub.
worrying about it at all is going all cloak and dagger. if doing a wipe and reload is not sufficient for your security purposes, then you already have larger problems because you're trying to manage endpoint security on employee owned devices.

BangersInMyKnickers
Nov 3, 2004

I have a thing for courageous dongles

mystes posted:

Is this really true? I think pretty much nobody is using the TPM in a mode where it would actually protect against the hard disk inserting malicious bootloader code. I guess assuming the lack of any vulnerabilities, bitlocker can at least hopefully prevent a malicious OS from reading your data after it boots, which is something.

Also, isn't nvme just pci-e basically? Could a malicious nvme drive just read arbitrary host memory after booting?

depends. if the drive advertises itself as opel or self-encrypting using the older SATA standard, the os will get the disk encryption key (DEK) from the tpm and then hand it over to the drive's firmware to handle the AES. if your drive doesn't support those standards, or you modified your gpo config to disable the hardware offload, then the DEK should stay in the OS and the AES calcs happen on CPU so that would probably stand up to hostile drive firmware.

Kazinsal
Dec 13, 2011



James Mickens' bit on the Mossad/Not Mossad Threat Model is something that deeply applies here

spankmeister
Jun 15, 2008






Lol as if the NSA is interested in y'all goony asses.

spankmeister
Jun 15, 2008






"Oh no, I'd better not buy a second hand computer because there is the infinitesimally small chance there is NSA malware on the hard drive controller"

lmbo

redleader
Aug 18, 2005

Engage according to operational parameters

Kazinsal posted:

James Mickens' bit on the Mossad/Not Mossad Threat Model is something that deeply applies here

yeah, it's a v good threat model for normal people

Chalks
Sep 30, 2009

yall need to stop buying second hand computers from isis

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Midjack
Dec 24, 2007



Chalks posted:

yall need to stop buying second hand computers from isis

it was such a good deal but the guy kept joking about how heavy it was

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