6 ms·
While I mostly agree with this, I don't agree here. Maybe you need to connect your notebook to a projector and they hand you a thunderbolt to hdmi cable. They
by lawl 9y ago
While I mostly agree with this, I don't agree here. Maybe you need to connect your notebook to a projector and they hand you a thunderbolt to hdmi cable.
They don't phsically own your device and yet you're possibly fucked.
- Klathmon 9y agoCouldn't a simple OS "permissions" system mostly fix that loophole (as much as it can be fixed)? "[device name] is requesting [scary sounding permission] Allow?" It won't protect users from themselves, but it will protect "bad-usb" style attacks.
- toyg 9y agoI still have to meet the user who will ever click “No” at one of those prompts.
- Klathmon 9y agoWell please let me introduce you to some of our clients that click "no" to the "[b2b app] is requesting permission to use your camera to scan barcodes" about 40% of the time according to our analytics... But in all seriousness, I agree that it's far from perfect, however I still think there is a way to allow the possibility without almost completely giving up on security.
- kbenson 9y agoNo, because when you have full access to RAM, there's no actual distinction in those messages for thunderbolt devices. Unless maybe you meant just the same scary message for every thunderbolt device, in which case people become acclimated to ignoring the message. And that may be after they've wasted support time asking why some device wants this scary access.
- Klathmon 9y agoI meant more the second one, although depending on how widespread thunderbolt devices are, it might become useless like you say. But are thunderbolt devices really expected to be that common that a message like this would be treated like the windows UAC dialog?
- kbenson 9y agoI dock my laptop on a regular basis through Thunderbolt, as it's my workstation as well. It really depends on the person and their usage patterns.
- solarkraft 9y agoI definitely wish for USB-C to become very wide spread because it converges so many functions across different device types. For me Thunderbolt adds another layer to that, enabling extra features like super fast data transfer, however at the cost of security. A security prompt seems very reasonable to me here, however I'm not sure Intel or Apple are very interested in that becasue they would be admitting a weakness and hinder the adoption of their own technology in some ways. However for user trust this would be a very big win in my eyes.
- Klathmon 9y agoI agree, however I could absolutely see it getting away from us. If Thunderbolt gives even a slight advantage over USB-C, vendors will want to use it over USB-C. And the layperson will want it as well, which leads to "creep" making the most insecure but fastest method the "main". There would need to be a way to dissuade vendors from using Thunderbolt for everything... And sadly a warning message isn't enough.
- chimeracoder 9y agoThis isn't an apples to apples comparison. Thunderbolt 3 is a protocol, and USB-C, is a connector type uses for a lot of things, including Thunderbolt 3. There is Thunderbolt 2, but it never saw any adoption outside Apple, and it's basically dead.
- andreiw 9y agoIOMMU? You still get to lock down access per device...or the Mac laptops don’t have an IOMMU?
- hultner 9y agoI think they have, at least mine does.
- darpa_escapee 9y agoMany laptops ship with a disabled IOMMU or without one.
- ken 9y agoI'm a pretty technical user, and I'm not sure how that would help me at all. What am I supposed to do with such a prompt? A conference coordinator hands me a T3-HDMI adapter (as in the above scenario), I plug it in to my laptop, and it says "This device is requesting direct memory access. Allow Y/N?" My talk starts in an hour. Should I ask for the source code to the adapter firmware so I can do a quick audit?
- gambiting 9y agoYep. If the UAC prompts have taught us anything, it's that users will click on anything that gets their program to run no matter what the prompt actually says(and in most cases, they don't even read it).
- ajmurmann 9y agoI think the attack vector is even bigger than that. In an open office it should be relatively easy to swap out one of your devices with a identical looking, tampered device. I can only imagine how much harm you could do leaving a modified usb-c to other stuff adapter somewhere in an office.
- gambiting 9y agoI mean sure, but in that scenario you can swap a keyboard for one with a built-in keylogger, no need to bother with some ultra-complex ram bumping TB3 devices. If the attacker has physical access to your machine, all bets are off anyway.
- kahnpro 9y agoRight but in a office environment we could be talking about drive by attacks where yes someone has physical access, but not enough time to be able to disassemble the machine and replace the keyboard without anyone noticing.