Interested in Mac viruses? Here’s Thunderstrike 2, a.k.a. the “firmworm”

– Thunderstrike courtesy of Shutterstock –

Thunderstrike is back.

And like your favourite movie sequel, it’s called Thunderstrike 2.

The sequel builds on work reported at the start of 2015 that used security holes in the firmware on your Mac to inject malicious code into the very earliest part of the boot process, where it can run long before OS X itself.

To explain: the firmware is a sort-of hardware-level operating system, stored in a special chip on the motherboard, that prepares your computer for running a regular operating system such as OS X or Windows.

The Boot ROM

In the early days, computer firmware was stored in a special Boot ROM chip – a read-only memory device that was programmed in the factory, plugged into your computer, and remained forever unmodified and unmodifiable.

So, Boot ROMs couldn’t be infected with malicious code, which was very handy; but they couldn’t be updated or patched, either.

To fix bugs, you had to extract the chip and replace it with a new one – a troublesome task on a single computer, let alone in an office full of them.

For convenience, therefore, Boot ROMs were ultimately replaced by Flash chips that were usually write-protected, but could be rewritten under controlled conditions. (They’re still commonly called “Boot ROMs,” but they are no longer truly read-only.)

In other words, only by using special hardware configuration settings could the firmware be updated, which prevented accidental overwrites.

Digital signatures

Apple and many other motherboard manufacturers eventually went one step further, and organised things so that the firmware chip could only be updated by code already contained in the firmware.

For additional security (and control), firmware updates would only go ahead if the new firmware version was digitally signed by the motherboard vendor.

The cryptographic key used to verify the digital signature was stored, of course, in the firmware.

Once the firmware had booted up, it enabled various hardware lockout mechanisms so that from OS X, or any other operating system, you couldn’t change anything.

In theory, both accidental and deliberate overwrites were now prevented.

You couldn’t change the firmware during its own bootup unless you had the right cryptographic key to sign the update.

And you couldn’t change the cryptographic key after the firmware had loaded because it “locked the door” behind itself.

The loophole

Unfortunately, at the start of 2015, researcher Trammell Hudson figured out that there was a loophole, thanks to an intermediate stage between the execution of the firmware itself, and the loading of your chosen operating system.

The Mac start-up-process goes something like this:

1. Load firmware from the Boot ROM (soldered onto the motherboard).
2. Load firmware Option ROMs from any connected Thunderbolt devices.
3. Load and run the Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) code.
4. Load and run OS X itself.

During stage 2, Hudson found a way to bypass the hardware interlock that was supposed to protect the firmware from being modified.

Worse still, he could change the cryptographic key stored in the firmware.

From then on, the usual firmware update process would only accept firmware images that Hudson himself had created and signed.

Trying to restore Apple’s official firmware would fail.

Thus the name Thunderstrike – an infected Thunderbolt device, such as Apple’s own readily-available Ethernet Adaptor, could be used as a vector for unauthorised firmware updates.

One door closes, another one opens

Apple introduced security patches in OS X 10.10.2, released at the end of January 2015, in an attempt to shut off the Thunderstrike hole.

Unfortunately, it seems that Apple didn’t close all the doors.

Hudson, together with two other researchers named Xeno Kovah and Corey Kallenberg, have figured out Thunderstrike 2, which they’ll be showing off at Black Hat USA 2015 and Def Con, two security events taking place back-to-back this week in Las Vegas.

They’ve actually gone one step further with Thunderstrike 2.

As well as using a booby-trapped Thunderbolt Option ROM to modify your Mac’s firmware, they’ve figured out how to include a virus in the modified firmware code.

Their virus will, in turn, attempt to modify the firmware of Thunderbolt devices you insert from then on, thus turning them into carriers of the firmware booby trap, too.

With a touch of techie humour, they’ve dubbed their firmware-borne virus a “firmworm“.

Thunderbolt devices, of course, include removable hard disks…

…in an echo of Stuxnet, the virus that used USB devices to travel between computers on physically separate networks.

Unfortunately, while USB disks carrying Stuxnet could be purged altogether by overwriting them from inside your operating system, infectious Thunderbolt devices can’t be cleaned up, or even detected, in that way.

What to do?

• Avoid plugging untrusted Thunderbolt devices into your Mac, for example if someone you don’t know offers to lend you a network adaptor at a conference.
• Avoid leaving your computer unattended. (This is obvious advice anyway, but Thunderstrike 2 adds another reason to keep it with you as much as you can.)
• Keep your eye out for forthcoming patches from Apple!