8 ms·

NSA's BIOS Backdoor a.k.a. God Mode Malware

190 points by notastartup 12y ago

skrzyp 12y ago
Nothing suprising, just take a look at the Intel iAMT ;)
- voltagex_ 12y ago
  Offtopic, but I've been trying to get into my Thinkpad X1's AMT setup - I hit ctrl-P on boot but it is missing some kind of file and just boots normally. Anyone know anything about it?
- Spooky23 12y ago
  Forget about AMT, it's a major pain to enable even if you need to. The Computrace "Laptop LoJack" application is trivial to activate has been embedded in most major OEM bios for years. http://www.absolute.com/en/partners/bios-compatibility.aspx http://www.absolute.com/en/partners/bios-compatibility.aspx It's capable of phoning home, deleting or replacing files on the operating system and wiping out the system. It can persist across re installations of support operating systems. When combined with AMT features it can permanently brick the device as well.
  - userbinator 12y ago
    Reading this sentence from the article reminded me of Computrace: because even a rudimentary NTFS driver would require at least several tens of kilobytes of space when compressed The Computrace option ROM is a little over 20KB (compressed), yet it contains much of the functionality of the NSA backdoor described in the article - including write-support drivers for FAT/FAT32/NTFS. http://securelist.com/analysis/publications/58278/absolute-computrace-revisited/ http://securelist.com/analysis/publications/58278/absolute-c... So the reason for using the RAID controller's option ROM may be for stealth instead of size restrictions, and it also means that, if the NSA can tell Absolute what to do, they already have a BIOS-level backdoor into nearly everyone's machines.
jokoon 12y ago
I could never work in computer security
DiThi 12y ago
If the page author reads this: I find the delayed sidebar animation very annoying. Also so distracting I'd say the "Want to learn more?" boxes are less effective this way.
- kbaker 12y ago
  Haha, same here, I nuked it with a display:none to #sidebar because it was so annoying and I wanted to finish the article.
- giovannibajo1 12y ago
  Safari's Reader Mode is a godsend for these sites.
greenyoda 12y ago
It's interesting that this malware only targets certain models of Dell PowerEdge servers with particular RAID controllers. Since the average terrorist isn't likely to be using one of these, it would seem that the purpose of this malware is for spying on businesses or government agencies.
- themartorana 12y ago
  Or it was a proof of concept meant to remain obscure?
- thrownaway2424 12y ago
  Are you well-acquainted with the census of popular server hardware among terrorists organizations? If so, please elaborate. If not, tell us what could possibly lead you to write such a comment.
  - coolj 12y ago
    I get the impression that most violent terrorist groups are rather low-tech and are not using _any_ server hardware. If you're aware of terrorists routinely operating DCs or co-locating servers, feel free to correct my understanding.
    - digitalengineer 12y ago
      This is fot the 'hackers' such as Anonymous I suppose.
    - cLeEOGPw 12y ago
      I wouldn't be surprised if ISIS would use more advanced and up to date server hardware than most corporations.
  - tobltobs 12y ago
    Maybe he is not a citizen of the US and therefore believes that the main aim of the NSA is industrial espionage.
- 12y ago
userbinator 12y ago
Here's another reason why using a free BIOS like Coreboot is a great idea - if malware attempts to reflash it with an infected copy of presumably the original proprietary BIOS, it will be very, very obvious. Another "tamper detection" idea, if you're OK with using proprietary BIOS and/or Coreboot isn't supported, is to add a small piece of code to the existing BIOS that simply hashes the ROM contents and prints out a human-readable string to the boot screen based on that. If it goes missing or changes, then you can suspect something happened. Of course, the trick is to not have everyone doing this with the same code, or backdoors will just detect and spoof it. I modded the BIOS of an old machine I have to do this, it prints out "Customised by {my handle}".
- thrownaway2424 12y ago
  I actually don't know how this would become obvious. Do you look at your server screens while they boot? Any attempt to checksum the BIOS from the operating system could be easily bypassed by simply regurgitating the OEM BIOS if anyone reads it.
  - userbinator 12y ago
    Do you look at your server screens while they boot? Long enough to see the POST screen where I put the message: Award Modular BIOS v4.51PG ==Customised by XXXXXXXX== is pretty hard to not notice, especially if it suddenly changed back to string in the OEM BIOS. The code I inserted basically computes my string by "encrypting" the original string with some constants derived from the whole BIOS image, so if the BIOS was only partially modified it turns into rubbish, and if it was replaced, then the string reverts to the original one. The point is that the BIOS on that machine is globally unique, has a feature that I can easily identify, and would be difficult if not impossible to forge by an attacker with only the OEM BIOS. I came up with this shortly after the infamous CIH virus emerged. Ditto for the NSA trying to flash a backdoored Coreboot: they would have to know exactly the customisations I made to my BIOS to replicate them, and if they did, then I'm probably pwned anyway. Backdoors in an offboard option ROM would certainly avoid modifying the BIOS, but I guess a similar mechanism could be used to customise one to easily detect its modification.
- 12y ago
anonbanker 12y ago
So, I was making the correct determination when requiring that all server and desktop hardware puchased by my companies originate from BRICS nations. Avoiding dell/cisco/juniper/hp for networking equipment, and opting for Custom RK3188 and AllWinner A23-based routers/switches and desktop thin clients running (Debian/Angstrom) linux are gonna throw more than one wrench in any surveillance plans. I wonder how many exploits the Five Eyes have for Tahoe-LAFS running on LVM disks. I'm betting on very few.
- lobotryas 12y ago
  Isn't this changing the devil you know for one you don't? Instead of potentially having NSA spy on your org, you have potential of China and Russia doing the spying? Or is there solid evidence that these countries aren't engaging in the same stuff as the NSA?
  - oafitupa 12y ago
    Engineers have to work with what they have. Do you disagree that he made the right decision? Is there solid evidence that these countries are engaging in the same stuff as the NSA?
    - mikeash 12y ago
      There was plenty of solid evidence of those countries spying on US citizens long before there was solid evidence of the US spying on US citizens.
    - lobotryas 12y ago
      Yes, I disagree. If there's an almost guaranteed chance that my org will be spied on, I would rather have the US do the spying. Unlike a BRICS country, at least the US has the occasional Snowden to shed light on things. The resulting scandal may do little to change the status quo, but it'll lead to a discussion and maybe a civil suit my company can win. I have never heard of a similar public leaker from Russia or China (I imagine those people just quickly get disappeared). As for BRICS country spying, we have some very solid evidence that China is engaging in cyber espionage of both US military and corporate targets.
xSwag 12y ago
Why is this website not banned yet? They're very well known plagiarists. http://attrition.org/errata/charlatan/infosec_institute/ http://attrition.org/errata/charlatan/infosec_institute/
- jacquesm 12y ago
  It appears this article is a confirmation of that. https://sites.google.com/site/pinczakko/nsa-bios-backdoor-a-k-a-god-mode-malware---part-1 https://sites.google.com/site/pinczakko/nsa-bios-backdoor-a-... It took a while to find the original, it's a PDF rather than a web page and it was plagiarized within days of being published, google picked up on the plagiarized copy before it ever saw the original by the looks of it.
  - nekopa 12y ago
    On that site the author is the same one as listed on the infosec article, and they claim he's a researcher for ISI.
  - pascal_cuoq 12y ago
    I am not sure how you get from the PDF to the confirmation. The first page of the PDF says it is from “Infosec Institute” and “Darmawan Salihun”. If you want to show plagiarism, should you not be linking to a version that has the same contents but with different authors?
  - Someone1234 12y ago
    Darmawan Salihun is the author of both and according to his LinkedIn page: BIOS/UEFI Security Researcher InfoSec Institute June 2012 – Present (2 years 3 months) Plus the OP's article was published before that PDF (January Vs. Feb).
PhantomGremlin 12y ago
In "the good old days" before the race to the bottom that value-engineered every penny of cost out of a product, motherboards and expansion cards had onboard hardware jumpers or switches that protected the ROM from modification. It was impossible to update the BIOS without opening the case and physically moving the jumper. But that jumper cost money, and perhaps more importantly confused half the sysadmins and users out there. So the jumper is gone. Any program that knows the magic output sequence can overwrite the firmware. We're relying on security through obscurity to save us. And if I'm Dell, I'm thinking: Hey, what about HP? What about IBM? Why single me out? Most if not all of these computers are vulnerable to similar attacks.

190 points by notastartup 12y ago

skrzyp 12y ago

Nothing suprising, just take a look at the Intel iAMT ;)

voltagex_ 12y ago
Offtopic, but I've been trying to get into my Thinkpad X1's AMT setup - I hit ctrl-P on boot but it is missing some kind of file and just boots normally. Anyone know anything about it?
Spooky23 12y ago
Forget about AMT, it's a major pain to enable even if you need to. The Computrace "Laptop LoJack" application is trivial to activate has been embedded in most major OEM bios for years. http://www.absolute.com/en/partners/bios-compatibility.aspx http://www.absolute.com/en/partners/bios-compatibility.aspx It's capable of phoning home, deleting or replacing files on the operating system and wiping out the system. It can persist across re installations of support operating systems. When combined with AMT features it can permanently brick the device as well.
- userbinator 12y ago
  Reading this sentence from the article reminded me of Computrace: because even a rudimentary NTFS driver would require at least several tens of kilobytes of space when compressed The Computrace option ROM is a little over 20KB (compressed), yet it contains much of the functionality of the NSA backdoor described in the article - including write-support drivers for FAT/FAT32/NTFS. http://securelist.com/analysis/publications/58278/absolute-computrace-revisited/ http://securelist.com/analysis/publications/58278/absolute-c... So the reason for using the RAID controller's option ROM may be for stealth instead of size restrictions, and it also means that, if the NSA can tell Absolute what to do, they already have a BIOS-level backdoor into nearly everyone's machines.

jokoon 12y ago

I could never work in computer security

DiThi 12y ago

If the page author reads this: I find the delayed sidebar animation very annoying. Also so distracting I'd say the "Want to learn more?" boxes are less effective this way.

kbaker 12y ago
Haha, same here, I nuked it with a display:none to #sidebar because it was so annoying and I wanted to finish the article.
giovannibajo1 12y ago
Safari's Reader Mode is a godsend for these sites.

greenyoda 12y ago

It's interesting that this malware only targets certain models of Dell PowerEdge servers with particular RAID controllers. Since the average terrorist isn't likely to be using one of these, it would seem that the purpose of this malware is for spying on businesses or government agencies.

themartorana 12y ago
Or it was a proof of concept meant to remain obscure?
thrownaway2424 12y ago
Are you well-acquainted with the census of popular server hardware among terrorists organizations? If so, please elaborate. If not, tell us what could possibly lead you to write such a comment.
- coolj 12y ago
  I get the impression that most violent terrorist groups are rather low-tech and are not using _any_ server hardware. If you're aware of terrorists routinely operating DCs or co-locating servers, feel free to correct my understanding.
  - digitalengineer 12y ago
    This is fot the 'hackers' such as Anonymous I suppose.
  - cLeEOGPw 12y ago
    I wouldn't be surprised if ISIS would use more advanced and up to date server hardware than most corporations.
- tobltobs 12y ago
  Maybe he is not a citizen of the US and therefore believes that the main aim of the NSA is industrial espionage.
12y ago

userbinator 12y ago

Here's another reason why using a free BIOS like Coreboot is a great idea - if malware attempts to reflash it with an infected copy of presumably the original proprietary BIOS, it will be very, very obvious. Another "tamper detection" idea, if you're OK with using proprietary BIOS and/or Coreboot isn't supported, is to add a small piece of code to the existing BIOS that simply hashes the ROM contents and prints out a human-readable string to the boot screen based on that. If it goes missing or changes, then you can suspect something happened. Of course, the trick is to not have everyone doing this with the same code, or backdoors will just detect and spoof it. I modded the BIOS of an old machine I have to do this, it prints out "Customised by {my handle}".

thrownaway2424 12y ago
I actually don't know how this would become obvious. Do you look at your server screens while they boot? Any attempt to checksum the BIOS from the operating system could be easily bypassed by simply regurgitating the OEM BIOS if anyone reads it.
- userbinator 12y ago
  Do you look at your server screens while they boot? Long enough to see the POST screen where I put the message: Award Modular BIOS v4.51PG ==Customised by XXXXXXXX== is pretty hard to not notice, especially if it suddenly changed back to string in the OEM BIOS. The code I inserted basically computes my string by "encrypting" the original string with some constants derived from the whole BIOS image, so if the BIOS was only partially modified it turns into rubbish, and if it was replaced, then the string reverts to the original one. The point is that the BIOS on that machine is globally unique, has a feature that I can easily identify, and would be difficult if not impossible to forge by an attacker with only the OEM BIOS. I came up with this shortly after the infamous CIH virus emerged. Ditto for the NSA trying to flash a backdoored Coreboot: they would have to know exactly the customisations I made to my BIOS to replicate them, and if they did, then I'm probably pwned anyway. Backdoors in an offboard option ROM would certainly avoid modifying the BIOS, but I guess a similar mechanism could be used to customise one to easily detect its modification.
12y ago

anonbanker 12y ago

So, I was making the correct determination when requiring that all server and desktop hardware puchased by my companies originate from BRICS nations. Avoiding dell/cisco/juniper/hp for networking equipment, and opting for Custom RK3188 and AllWinner A23-based routers/switches and desktop thin clients running (Debian/Angstrom) linux are gonna throw more than one wrench in any surveillance plans. I wonder how many exploits the Five Eyes have for Tahoe-LAFS running on LVM disks. I'm betting on very few.

lobotryas 12y ago
Isn't this changing the devil you know for one you don't? Instead of potentially having NSA spy on your org, you have potential of China and Russia doing the spying? Or is there solid evidence that these countries aren't engaging in the same stuff as the NSA?
- oafitupa 12y ago
  Engineers have to work with what they have. Do you disagree that he made the right decision? Is there solid evidence that these countries are engaging in the same stuff as the NSA?
  - mikeash 12y ago
    There was plenty of solid evidence of those countries spying on US citizens long before there was solid evidence of the US spying on US citizens.
  - lobotryas 12y ago
    Yes, I disagree. If there's an almost guaranteed chance that my org will be spied on, I would rather have the US do the spying. Unlike a BRICS country, at least the US has the occasional Snowden to shed light on things. The resulting scandal may do little to change the status quo, but it'll lead to a discussion and maybe a civil suit my company can win. I have never heard of a similar public leaker from Russia or China (I imagine those people just quickly get disappeared). As for BRICS country spying, we have some very solid evidence that China is engaging in cyber espionage of both US military and corporate targets.

xSwag 12y ago

Why is this website not banned yet? They're very well known plagiarists. http://attrition.org/errata/charlatan/infosec_institute/ http://attrition.org/errata/charlatan/infosec_institute/

jacquesm 12y ago
It appears this article is a confirmation of that. https://sites.google.com/site/pinczakko/nsa-bios-backdoor-a-k-a-god-mode-malware---part-1 https://sites.google.com/site/pinczakko/nsa-bios-backdoor-a-... It took a while to find the original, it's a PDF rather than a web page and it was plagiarized within days of being published, google picked up on the plagiarized copy before it ever saw the original by the looks of it.
- nekopa 12y ago
  On that site the author is the same one as listed on the infosec article, and they claim he's a researcher for ISI.
- pascal_cuoq 12y ago
  I am not sure how you get from the PDF to the confirmation. The first page of the PDF says it is from “Infosec Institute” and “Darmawan Salihun”. If you want to show plagiarism, should you not be linking to a version that has the same contents but with different authors?
- Someone1234 12y ago
  Darmawan Salihun is the author of both and according to his LinkedIn page: BIOS/UEFI Security Researcher InfoSec Institute June 2012 – Present (2 years 3 months) Plus the OP's article was published before that PDF (January Vs. Feb).

PhantomGremlin 12y ago

In "the good old days" before the race to the bottom that value-engineered every penny of cost out of a product, motherboards and expansion cards had onboard hardware jumpers or switches that protected the ROM from modification. It was impossible to update the BIOS without opening the case and physically moving the jumper. But that jumper cost money, and perhaps more importantly confused half the sysadmins and users out there. So the jumper is gone. Any program that knows the magic output sequence can overwrite the firmware. We're relying on security through obscurity to save us. And if I'm Dell, I'm thinking: Hey, what about HP? What about IBM? Why single me out? Most if not all of these computers are vulnerable to similar attacks.