assume that the threat actor has deployed further persistence mechanisms.

So, anyway, today CERT released an excellent alert about the SolarWinds compromise. It's full of good advice, but my favorite sentence is the one I used as a title.

I will be shocked, if, in the fullness of time, we don't discover that they modified firmware, in order to achieve persistence.

In order to do that, all they need to do is this:

(1) Create a driver capable of reading and writing firmware. This is not easy, but there are examples, such as Chipsec, and don't bother arguing that these perps are not smart enough to do it.

(2) Such a driver would need to be signed, but they already proved they can sign stuff.

(3) Get the driver on the target system. That's what SunBurst (their downloader) can already do.

(4) Modify the right bit of code in the firmware. Remember, there are between 200 and 1,000 compiled C programs, in Windows format, and Bad Guys have been modifying compiled C programs for a long time now. They know how to do that. Oh, and remember that although they are cryptograpically signed, the signature is only checked at flash time.

(5) Remember, it's in the UEFI spec that the firmware can download anything from anywhere using HTTP or FTP, and the firmware has its own network stack.

(6) Once the firmware is modified, SunBurst is perfectly capable of cleaning up such evidense.

My second favorite sentence in the alert is the one about forensically imaging the systems. This is good, but I don't think any forensics kits currently capture firmware.

Folks, everyone needs to start to watch their firmware. You maybe confident that "they" are.

2021 is saying "Hold my beer".

2021 is going to be interesting

So, anyway, in my last post, I opined that 2021 might be saying, "Hold my beer", and this morning we wake up to news of the SolarWinds attack.

Now, so far, there has not been any mention of resultant firmware attacks, but it seems to me that the attackers were sufficently "sophisticated" that they are capable of such attacks.

Systems seem to have been compromised for six to nine months, and that is plenty of time to (1) install a signed firmware driver, (2) modify the firmware, and (3) remove the signed firmware driver.

It might not have happened... but it might have.

The question then becomes... how would you know?

Everyone, from .gov to F500 needs to start to monitor their firmware. It's not part of your average toolkit, but there are options, and I blogged about how to dump your firmware here, and we are happy to help if you need it.

2021 is warming up!

2021 is saying, "Hold my beer!"

I have been warning for quite a while, that firmware, particularly UEFI, is the next malware battleground. It is heating up, and everyone needs to start to pay attention.

Consider these items:

One of the RansomWare crews is starting to try to examine, and maybe modify, UEFI

Just to highlight how powerful UEFI is, someone has ported Doom to UEFI. This is pretty awesome, especially if you are a Doom fan, but it sure shows something about UEFI … Doom

The Hacking Team UEFI rootkit seems to have re-surfaced from a nation/state team … Hacking Team

As well as those little itms, having analyzed about 3,000 firmware blobs, here are some of our key findings…

• UEFI firmware contains between 200 and about 1,000 compiled C programs, in Windows format, which is a format well understood by attackers, and defenders, alike.

• approximately half the executables will have signing certificates that are expired. It turns out that certificates are only checked at flash time. What this means is that if something can get write access to the firmware, it could infect, or replace, whatever it likes.

• Nation-state actors have already managed some penetration, with attacks like Shadow Hammer, and LoJax.

• about seven manufacturers have firmware programs that are roughly functionally equivalent to the Lenovo rootkit, from 2015. They are just not as noisy, so they haven’t been noticed.

• out of a random sampling of about 1,500 blobs, 581 had remote update by http or ftp capability, 117 had email capabilities, 1287 had some password reset capability, and 260 contained the word ‘backdoor’

• UEFI has its own network stack, and can download programs, and whole operating systems, from the Internet using http or ftp and some can send email using EHLO

Now, I'm not saying that UEFI is bad. It's the opposite... it's great! It is, however, immensely powerful, and one of the truths of computer security is that functionality (or power) and security tend to exist in an inverse relationship. In other words, the more powerful something is, the less secure it tends to be.

It is clear that our adversaries, from ransomware gangs, to nation/state teams, are attacking the firmware, and it is heating up. Everyone needs to start paying attention. It doesn't matter if your stuff is all in the cloud, because if something bad gets in the firmware, it will be able to find your cloud credentials, and your blockchain private keys, and ... whatever it wants.

Everyone is waiting for 2020 to end, but I reckon 2021 is saying, "Hold my beer, and watch this!"