Stuff just got real

So, anyway, ESET just released that they found the first UEFI rootkit. You can read about it here … , but the short version is that they found an example of a modified version of Computrace/Lo Jack being used to attack a computer.

This is serious, and here are the main bits to know…

(1) Computrace/Lo Jack is a legitimate application that is factory installed into the firmware of nearly every laptop in the world, of all varieties. The idea is that if your laptop gets stolen, you can find it, and/or wipe it remotely. This is obviously good, and useful.

Close followers of my blogs, and posts, will know that I have pointed out that the Kaspersky guys, in 2014, showed how it could be compromised, and that it was therefore a potential problem, even though it is a legit app. This is not a slight against the excellent Lo Jack. All software has a weak underbelly, if you probe hard enough.

This is now proof that I was right.

(2) The perps are probably a Russian hacking group (military, KGB, FSB, or something similar), known by a bunch of names, but I call them Fancy Bear, for no particular reason other than it was the first name I knew them by, and it's a neat name. These are the same guys that (probably) broke into a factory in Taiwan in Feb 2018, and modified firmware in a bunch of computers, headed for the German government. If you are a suspicious soul, like me, you probably think this is not their only rodeo.

(3) The perps used a legitimate, and scary powerful tool called RWEverything. This is new to me, but the nub of the matter is that it is a legitimately signed driver that, seemingly, can read or write everything in firmware. This is obviously powerful, and cool, as long as it is used for good.

(4) So far, we have not found an exact match for the samples in their report in our collection, but we have _many_ variants of Lo Jack. They may be all innocent, or … maybe not. We are still looking and thinking.

(5) We still have six variants of the Lenovo rootkit, that no one detects (well, one product detects one variant, but that’s approaching zero from a stats perspective… one out of 360). This may/probably mean they are extinct, or ... maybe not…

(6) Interestingly, the modus operandi of the Lenovo rootkit and the modified Lo Jacks, are _remarkably_ similar. This might be pure coincidence… or … maybe something else.

Bottom line is that we have many variants of Computrace/Lo Jack that need to be examined, and many Lenovo rootkit variants that need to be examined.

And we have other things that look suspicious.

It would be really helpful to get more firmware samples, and it's geeky, but some How To instructions can be found here

All this, combined with what we have found about certificates being expired, or marked "Do not trust", or "Do not ship", which you can read about here suggests to me that we are on dangerous, shaky, and new, ground.

Stay tuned.

50% of firmware certs are expired?

So, anyway, I grabbed a bunch of firmware blobs (there were 99, to be precise) that I happened to have on this laptop, in order to look for more rootkit-like thingies, but I found some other bits that I found even more thought provoking, and I got sidetracked. I do have A.D.D. Oh look! A squirrel... (That's a joke, btw)

The first TPT (thought provoking thing) was that 38 of the 99 had certificates in them that said either "Do not trust - xxx Test PK", or "DO NOT TRUST - Lost Certificate", or "DO NOT SHIP - some_company Test KEK". That's about a third, and feels rather high.

It may be that the uploads that we are getting are not completely representative of what the Real World looks like. They might be coming out of test labs or something like that, which is plausible, because you have to be a bit of a geek to extract firmware. The other, and scarier, option here is that it _is_ representative of the Real World, and one in three computers has a "Do not trust" certificate in it. I hope that is not true.

The second TPT was that my program counted a total of 1,377 certificates, and fully 631 of them were expired. That's nearly 50%, and again, seems rather high.

Again, it might be that we are getting non-Real World firmwares being uploaded, but the other option here is that people are not updating their firmware, which seems likely to me.

The third TPT was that 24 of the blobs had a release date of 2018, and still had 42 expired certs in them. That seems weird.

The fourth TPT was that 5 of the 24 blobs from 2018 had a "Do not trust" cert in them. That seems way weird.

I can think of no reasonable explanation for number three and number four, unless they are coming out of labs, but I suspect that the real explanation is that manufacturers are simply not paying attention because no one is calling them out.

It's also a bit of worry that nothing in the firmware chain of trust seems to care about the dodgy certs. This implies, to me, that they could be replaced by out and out APT-level malware, and nothing and no one would notice.

The plot thickens.

The main thing we need is more samples, so if anyone wants to help, instructions about how to dump your firmware are here.

Stay tuned.