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That is very interesting. > I'm also missing out the fact that this entire process only kicks off after the Management Engine says it can, which means we're wa
by TacticalCoder 4y ago
That is very interesting.
> I'm also missing out the fact that this entire process only kicks off after the Management Engine says it can, which means we're waiting for an entirely independent x86 to boot an entire OS before our CPU even starts pretending to execute the system firmware.
I take it that that OS is Minix?
> But what verifies the first component in the boot chain? You can't simply ask the BIOS to verify itself - if an attacker can replace the BIOS, they can replace it with one that simply lies about having done so. Intel's solution to this is called Boot Guard.
Wait... How can an attacker replace the BIOS? Aren't motherboard nowadays protected from unwarranted BIOS flashing?
Say I'm an attacker and I got root on some PC (Intel or AMD) running Linux, how do I replace the BIOS with a backdoored BIOS without the user noticing?
- mjg59 4y ago> I take it that that OS is Minix? It's the Minix kernel, I don't think the userland contains much Minix. > Wait... How can an attacker replace the BIOS? If you have physical access you can just attach to the flash directly and reprogram it. This is very much in-scope for various people.
- LoganDark 4y ago> If you have physical access you can just attach to the flash directly and reprogram it. This is very much in-scope for various people. Not to mention just replacing the motherboard since the CPU is socketed and could go anywhere.