Dropsafe

by Alec Muffett

And this, boys and girls, is why when traveling any distance we shut our Macs totally down #security

Yes, it is possible to hack a Mac through the new DisplayPort/Thunderbolt interface, exactly the same way it is possible to hack Macs and PCs through FireWire interfaces.

How? Well, as Thunderbolt expands the PCIe bus,  buying a Firewire to Thunderbolt adapter will suffice. This is the same approach as many pentesters, myself included, have used when encountering laptops without a FireWire port on pentests. Simply using PCMCIA or ExpressCards to expand the bus and add a FireWire port will do the trick. I finally got the hardware to test this out last week, and it works like a charm. Plug n’ Play FTW.

via Adventures with Daisy in Thunderbolt-DMA-land: Hacking Macs through the Thunderbolt interface | Break & Enter.

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Comments

3 responses to “And this, boys and girls, is why when traveling any distance we shut our Macs totally down #security”

  1. Jonathan

    The other reason is so it doesn’t wake up randomly while packed in an insulated container, burning out the logic board irretrievably.

    Not that I’m bitter or anything.

    Reply
  2. Dave Walker

    I’d wondered whether FW to PCMCIA etc adaptors would work, for this purpose; unsurprised to see they do, but it’s good to have the confirmation. Proof, again, that physical control of a device by an adversary pretty much = game over for electronic security; the best you can do is the FIPS 140-2 level 4 HSM trick of self-wiping (and drives are too big to scrub that quickly).

    Reply
    1. alecm

      Got one? Try it and let us know.

      Reply

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