On 8/31/15, Blibbet wrote:

... If someone has one of these old Thinkpads boxes (sold by "Ministry of Freedom" (formerly trading as Gluglug), please try to run CHIPSEC on it;

does not run; not needed.

Potential insecurely-built IBM system firmware security aside, I don't think Libreboot nor SeaBIOS offers much in terms of security to stop attackers, as well.

building your own BIOS images, signing your own bootstraps, is "not offer much"? you're wrong and these are incredibly useful security measures. of course by no means sufficient by themselves, and you must always keep your laptops/devices safe with you, lest they be implanted by trivial means with physical access. best regards,

On 9/1/15, Georgi Guninski wrote:

... They protect against trojanized (off the shelf) BIOS.

prevents trojan / arb exec from persistence via BIOS. prevents surreptitious FDE keylogger via BIOS hooks. yes, also off the shelf attacks. which is nearly all of them. :) [ see also HackingTeam dump, and research examples ]

If an adversary has sufficient supply of application and root sploits, how much they will protect you?

separate question; see also defense in depth. however, a robust bespoke BIOS beats otherwise cascade catastrophe.

Instead of rootkit they will root you every boot IMHO.

this also has a different visibility, as executing in priv. or user context & addr space. also why "throw away" VMs per Qubes or Live OS images a useful technique to avoid attempted persistence via weird machines gone rogue... best regards,

On 9/1/15, Blibbet wrote:

... I merely meant that BIOS didn't offer new security tech, that newer firmware tech does. My point was that Verified coreboot is stronger than Libreboot, and Ministry of Freedom could be using stronger open source tech in their product than they currently do. Eg, coreboot has Verified Boot mode, which is roughly like UEFI's Secure Boot, and can help protect the a blob-free system more than just Libreboot.

thank you for the clarification :)

... Users should not have to rebuild their refurbished firmware to make it better, the vendor should offer that.

you've got my vote ;)

Recently someone ported a modern ARM-based Chromebook (ASUS C201, Veyron Speedy) to use Libreboot, w/o blobs. That's another alternative to old x86 systems, with different attacks. I'm not sure what's safer, ARM or x86 these days. x86 BIOS/UEFI attackers are well-documented by researchers, but ARM-based ones are less so, AFAICT. I'm unclear what's safer from attackers, an old x86, or a modern ARM or AMD system. http://firmwaresecurity.com/2015/08/13/libreboot-ported-to-modern-arm-chrome...

it appears nothing is safe, and the effort is trivial to modest. #infosec

Blob-free and secure, that's my goal. BIOS -- even Libreboot's SeaBIOS -- is not secure.

this reminds me of the open hardware processor designs; yes - it is open! but, it lacks modern security features to assist operating system and application developers securing their systems... fun problems :) best regards,

On 9/1/15, Georgi Guninski wrote:

...

it appears nothing is safe, and the effort is trivial to modest. #infosec

That was my point.

what's funny is this leads to security advantage through obscurity, where the bespoke solutions break off-the-shelf exploitation techniques. this delay between failed attempt and success, or simply failed attempt and plan B, used to provide early warning and feedback. what a world we live in! best regards,

On Tue, 15 Sep 2015 22:15:10 -0400 dan@geer.org wrote:

...

what's funny is this leads to security advantage through obscurity, where the bespoke solutions break off-the-shelf exploitation techniques.

[I'm behind; this may be a duplicate]

DARPA is actively looking at obfuscation https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=a303af332a90b1e84fdb91d7dd382396&tab=core&_cview=0

Dr. Michael Hsieh, SafeWare@darpa.mil that's a good address to send so called child porn

Which leads me to ask the general question, what does one do when something you might soon depend upon can simply never be analyzed?

We can oh so easily return to a world of sorcerers, alchemy, and faith in powers in proportion to their mystery.

--dan

On 09/01/2015 08:43 AM, Blibbet wrote:

...

On 8/31/15, Blibbet wrote:

...

... Potential insecurely-built IBM system firmware security aside, I don't think Libreboot nor SeaBIOS offers much in terms of security to stop attackers, as well. ... Having an ancient laptop may help. Attackers may not be able to use CHIPSEC's HAL, that's the positive side of not being able to use CHIPSEC to test your defenses. :-) But there are alternatives to CHIPSEC's HAL, and they're less strict about chipsec support, and will likely work on

On 08/31/2015 07:33 PM, coderman wrote: old Thinkpads.

Re: security of the IBM Thinkpads refurbished by the Ministry of Freedom, it might be useful to check if they're in this category: Quoting a tweet from Joanna if Invisible Things Lab, on the topic of older hardware (than Purism's current choice): https://twitter.com/rootkovska/status/643414071514148864 "and old systems do not have IOMMU (VT-d) which makes them even less secure, trustworthy."

On 09/17/2015 12:00 PM, grarpamp wrote:

On Wed, Sep 16, 2015 at 10:48 AM, Blibbet wrote:

...

Quoting a tweet from Joanna if Invisible Things Lab, on the topic of older hardware (than Purism's current choice):

https://twitter.com/rootkovska/status/643414071514148864

"and old systems do not have IOMMU (VT-d) which makes them even less secure, trustworthy."

Question this in regards to number of gates available / needed for secret malefactor vs gatecount timeline vs time at which govt agencies and corp might desire and begin to cooperate or independantly perform same. ie: Are your your 486 or p55c and chipsets likely to contain malware? What about your Skylake? Given how ATT / Verizon / Sprint and others totally rolled over for Bush/911 what makes you think Intel or AMD or Microsoft are any different? WTF is up with windows 10? As if 7 vista and xp and Ubuntu Linux weren't enough.

search: AnandTech, Intel has now stopped quoting gatecount with Skylake. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY

Not trying to dis old refurbished x86s. Just pointing out a specific area to investigate w/r/t older x86 hardware. Joanna's tweet was one specfic case to look into. Pre-CHIPSEC, it is less clear to me. I wish I had a complete list of issues (i.e., the set of things to write for a CHIPSEC test profile for that hardware). Old Thinkpads are great, but a LIMITED resource, we can't just rely on old hardware forever. I wonder if Cyrix/Via/Transmeta/etc clones are also viable to be refurbished by Ministry of Freedom, and have any chance of being secure? I also wonder about MIPS and SunSPARC chips, they have some old boxes to refurbish, as well as some new MIPS boxes (a recent Chinese one not only runs MIPS but also x86 and ARM instructions!). If I were to hold out hope for an ISA that might be trustworthy, it would be the RISC-V. But that'll take a year or longer. The Raven3 board just came out, shown at HotChips. I hope that's the chip that Purism uses for their next laptop, along with the recent Open Hardware GPU, also announced at HotChips. Until then, I can update my own firmware on my ARM dev boards, and -- sans FSP blobs -- on Intel dev boards. And I have an ancient -- i.e., unknown security profile --- x86 with Libreboot. Wish Libreboot used coreboot's Verifed Boot, for a bit more protection, but that can be patched. Not sure about Win10. I've heard they have a freeware version, which is ad-sponsored, which must be be fun. Ubuntu, or as a friend of mine calls them, "Spybuntu", has been abusing privacy for years. I wouldn't ever trust an OS which is run by a single company. Debian isn't run by a single company. It isn't perfect, but has fewer than most. Does anyone have any opinion of Mempo, compared to QubesOS? I haven't used it yet, but it looks interesting. Qubes is great for Intel systems, but what about non-Intel, eg, ARM, does their isolation tech scale to non-Intel ISAs? If not, what OS should ARM users use? (Purism recently tweeted that they're going to get their PureOS to use parts of QubesOS. I don't presume to have a trustworthy or secure firmware, on any Intel box, perhaps AMD box, maybe ARM boxes. (The latter two seem to have less security research than Intel x86/x64 systems, if anyone has good pointers to ARM/AMD and other modern non-Intel HW, please speak up.) Eg: http://timeglider.com/timeline/5ca2daa6078caaf4 Or see last slide of most CHIPSEC or LebaCore talks, they have a good bibilography. Thanks.