Tag: Apple

BlackHat: Behind the scenes of iOS and Mac Security

~ hucktech ~ Leave a comment

Ivan Krstić, Head of Apple Security Engineering and Architecture at Apple, will be speaking at BlackHat on the T2 security processor:

[…]We will discuss three iOS and Mac security topics in unprecedented technical detail, offering the first public discussion of several key technologies new to iOS 13 and the Mac.[…]The T2 Security Chip brought powerful secure boot capabilities to the Mac. Comprehensively securing the boot process required protections against sophisticated direct memory access (DMA) attacks at every point, even in the presence of arbitrary Option ROM firmware. We will walk through the boot sequence of a Mac with the T2 Security Chip and explain key attacks and defenses at each step, including two industry-first firmware security technologies that have not been publicly discussed before.[…]

https://www.blackhat.com/us-19/briefings/schedule/#behind-the-scenes-of-ios-and-mac-security-17220

Vice: The Prototype iPhones That Hackers Use to Research Apple’s Most Sensitive Code

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[…]The thing that his team had been able to analyze for the first time was the iPhone’s Secure Enclave Processor (SEP), which handles data encryption for the iPhone. How they were able to do this was a valid question given Apple’s notorious secrecy, and the fact that the SEP is one of the most important and most closely guarded components of the iPhone, the most secure smartphone on the market. […]

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/gyakgw/the-prototype-dev-fused-iphones-that-hackers-use-to-research-apple-zero-days

Apple publishes whitepaper on T2 security chip

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Click to access Apple_T2_Security_Chip_Overview.pdf

Bloomberg: The Big Hack: How China Used a Tiny Chip to Infiltrate U.S. Companies

~ hucktech ~ 1 Comment

The attack by Chinese spies reached almost 30 U.S. companies, including Amazon and Apple, by compromising America’s technology supply chain, according to extensive interviews with government and corporate sources.

[…]There are two ways for spies to alter the guts of computer equipment.
One, known as interdiction, consists of manipulating devices as they’re in transit from manufacturer to customer. This approach is favored by U.S. spy agencies, according to documents leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.
The other method involves seeding changes from the very beginning.[…]

https://twitter.com/qrs/status/1047788385425940480

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-hack-how-china-used-a-tiny-chip-to-infiltrate-america-s-top-companies

https://twitter.com/qrs/status/1047788391939682309

 

 

Howard Oakley on Booting the Mac

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Howard Oakley has yet another new blog post on how Apple EFI works:

Booting the Mac: Will my Mac boot from this disk? A visual guide

There have been multiple recent blog posts on Apple EFI from this author! Eg:

Booting the Mac: bless, and what makes a volume bootable

Booting the Mac: Visual Summary

What’s stored in Mac NVRAM?

Booting the Mac: the kernel and extensions

Booting the Mac: loading boot.efi and Secure Boot

Booting the Mac: the kernel and extensions

~ hucktech ~ 1 Comment

The whole purpose of the BootROM and EFI phases is to get to load and run the macOS kernel and its extensions, which is what boot.efi, the “OS X booter”, finally does. Although boot.efi doesn’t suddenly vanish, from here on it is very little needed.[…]

Booting the Mac: the kernel and extensions

mOSL: Bash script to audit and fix macOS High Sierra (10.13.x) security settings

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https://twitter.com/0x0304/status/1028933297135661056

Settings that can be audited/ fixed:

enable automatic updates
enable gatekeeper
enable firewall
enable admin password preferences
enable terminal secure entry
disable firewall builin software
disable firewall downloaded signed
disable ipv6
disable mail remote content
disable remote apple events
disable remote login
set airdrop contacts only
set appstore update check daily
check SIP
check kext loading consent
check EFI integrity
check filevault
check firmware password set

https://github.com/0xmachos/mOSL