Tag: SMM

UEFI/SMM stability and performance improvements in QEMU 2.9 and edk2/OVMF git 296153c5, included with Fedora 26

~ hucktech ~ Leave a comment

Fedora 26 just released, and it ships with QEMU v2.9 and an updated OVMF, which adds SMM security improvements. Quoting email from Laszlo Ersek of Red Hat:

QEMU 2.9 is part of Fedora 26. The full changelog for QEMU 2.9 is here:

http://wiki.qemu.org/ChangeLog/2.9

The broadcast SMI feature is just one tiny line in the huge list (and it only mentions the generic negotiation feature, not the specific broadcast one):

“The q35 machine type offers SMI feature negotiation to interested guest firmware.”

QEMU v2.9 is important for running the SMM driver stack of edk2 — more precisely, machine type “pc-q35-2.9” is important — because it offers negotiable SMI broadcast, i.e., where one VCPU writes to ioport 0xB2, and the SMI is raised synchronously on all VCPUs. See:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1412313 [ovmf]
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1412327 [qemu]

QEMU v2.10 — more precisely, machine type “pc-q35-2.10” — will bring another SMM-related improvement, although not as critical as SMI broadcast. (And I guess it will be available in Fedora 27.) We call it “extended TSEG”, and it allows the QEMU user to specify more than 8MB SMRAM on the cmdline. This is important if you have a huge number of VCPUs, or huge guest RAM (into the TB range) because those things have a linearly growing SMRAM footprint (albeit with small constant factors). See:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1447027 [qemu and ovmf, both committed]
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1469338 [libvirt, under design]

The patches (qemu and ovmf) committed for BZ#1447027 above solve the “many VCPUs” question. The “huge guest RAM” question needs more platform code in OVMF; the patch for that is on edk2-devel, pending review:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1468526 [ovmf, pending review]

More info:
https://getfedora.org/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Management_Mode

Dmytro on PCI-E/SMM vulnerability

~ hucktech ~ Leave a comment

Dmytro has an interesting 6-part twitter post on PCI-e security:

Intel Excite project

~ hucktech ~ Leave a comment

There is a new document out from Intel that describes their Excite project. No URL to source code, AFAICT.

Finding BIOS Vulnerabilities with Symbolic Execution and Virtual Platforms
By Engblom, Jakob (Intel), Added June 6, 2017
Finding BIOS Vulnerabilities With Excite
Finding vulnerabilities in code is part of the constant security game between attackers and defenders. An attacker only needs to find one opening to be successful, while a defender needs to search for and plug all or at least most of the holes in a system. Thus, a defender needs more effective tools than the attacker to come out ahead.[…]

 

https://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2017/06/06/finding-bios-vulnerabilities-with-excite

Intel NUC SMM exploit

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Intel® Branded NUC’s Vulnerable to SMM exploit
Intel ID:      INTEL-SA-00068
Product family:      Intel® NUC Kits
Impact of vulnerability:      Elevation of Privilege
Severity rating:      Important
Original release:      May 02, 2017
Last revised:      May 02, 2017

Intel is releasing updated BIOS firmware for a privilege escalation issue. This issue affects Intel® NUC Kits listed in the Model Number section below. The issue identified is a method that enables malicious code to gain access to System Management Mode (SMM). A malicious attacker with local administrative access can leverage vulnerable BIOS to execute arbitrary code outside of SMRAM while system is running in System management mode (SMM), potentially compromising the platform. Intel products that are listed below should apply the update. Intel highly recommends updating the BIOS of all Intel® NUC’s to the recommended BIOS or later listed in the table of affected products. Intel would like to thank Security Researcher Dmytro Oleksiuk for discovering and reporting this issue.

https://security-center.intel.com/advisory.aspx?intelid=INTEL-SA-00068&languageid=en-fr

Shell script for Laszlo’s SMM test environment article

~ hucktech ~ Leave a comment

Laszlo Ersek of Red Hat wrote a wiki article on tianocore.org[1], showing how to setup the EDK2 with QEMU/OVMF for testing SMM code using Fedora.

Recently, Alex Floyd of PreOS Security wrote a shell script to codify this wiki article[2].

Laszlo’s wiki is dense, I expect this script will be useful for some UEFI firmware engineers and security researchers.

According to Alex, “some things needed tweaking to get to work, and the Windows portion of the tutorial is not included in the script.”

[1] https://github.com/tianocore/tianocore.github.io/wiki/Testing-SMM-with-QEMU,-KVM-and-libvirt

[2] https://github.com/gencymex/smmtestbuildscript

https://github.com/gencymex/smmtestbuildscript/blob/master/smmtesthost.sh

scan_thinkpwn: searches for ThinkPwn vulnerability

~ hucktech ~ Leave a comment

THINKPWN SCANNER: This program is used to scan UEFI drivers extracted from firmware image for ThinkPwn vulnerability in vendor/model agnostic way.
AUTHORS:
@d_olex (aka Cr4sh) — initial Vivisect based version of the program;
@trufae (aka pankake) — radare2 based version (this one);

Read the source code for more user docs, including a detailed source comment about how the code works.

https://github.com/Cr4sh/ThinkPwn/blob/master/scan_thinkpwn.py

More info:
https://github.com/Cr4sh/ThinkPwn
http://blog.cr4.sh/2016/06/exploring-and-exploiting-lenovo.html

Testing SMM with QEMU, KVM and libvirt

~ hucktech ~ Leave a comment

Laszlo Ersek has created a new document that shows how to test SMM using UEFI’s OVMF. Great information!

I’ve added the following article to the TianoCore wiki[1]. It should help both Windows and Linux desktop users build a KVM test machine / environment that closely resembles mine. Such an environment is useful for testing and regression-testing new MP and SMM features and bugfixes. The initial setup is not short, but once you got it up and running, it’s very simple to rebuild OVMF with the edk2 changes, install the firmware binary in the right place (see the article) and then click the Play button on the Fedora 25 and Windows 10 guests, to see the changes in action. If you have smaller updates or structural reorgs for the document, there’s no need to ask me, just go ahead and do them. If some significant information is missing that you’d like me to add, I think I’d prefer new TianoCore BZs at this time (Product: Tianocore Feature Requests, Component: Web Content, Assignee: yours truly). I don’t know when I’ll have time again to dig into this.
[1]https://github.com/tianocore/tianocore.github.io/wiki/Testing-SMM-with-QEMU,-KVM-and-libvirt

Full announcement:
https://lists.01.org/mailman/listinfo/edk2-devel

Tianocore BIOS setup authentication password patch

~ hucktech ~ Leave a comment

Jiewen Yao of Intel posted a V2 patch to the EDK2-devel list, adding new user authentication to Tianocore, including SMM interaction.

==== V2 ====
1) Add SmmCommunicationBufferProtocol dependency.
2) Cleanup header file and copyright to 2017.
3) Add missing UserAuthenticationSmm.uni.
4) Rename KeyLib.h/c to KeyService.h/c to avoid confusing.

This series patch adds password support in EDKII. This password based user authentication is to verify user when a user
wants to enter BIOS setup page. The detail information is added in [PATCH 5/6].

CryptoPkg:SmmCryptLib: Add real Pkcs5Pbkdf2.c.
SecurityPkg/dec: Add PcdPasswordCleared.
SecurityPkg/include: Add PlatformPasswordLib lib class.
SecurityPkg/PlatformPasswordLibNull: Add PlatformPasswordLib instance.
SecurityPkg/Password: Add Password based UserAuthentication modules.
SecurityPkg/dsc: add Password authentication module.

24 files changed, 2768 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

More info:
https://lists.01.org/mailman/listinfo/edk2-devel

Lenovo: AMI BIOS SMM vulnerability

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Lenovo Security Advisory: LEN-4710
Potential Impact:  Execution of code in SMM by an attacker with administrative access
Severity: Medium
Scope of impact: Industry-wide

Summary Description: System Management Mode (SMM) is the most privileged execution mode of the x86 processor. Software System Management Interrupt (SWSMI) handlers are used by software to call on BIOS functions that reside within the SMM. A vulnerability has been identified in one of the SWSMI handlers in the BIOS code from American Megatrends Inc. (AMI) used on some Lenovo systems. This could allow a malicious attacker with administrative access to execute code in the SMM and bypass some BIOS security mechanisms and install software with bootkit functionality. Mitigation Strategy for Customers (what you should do to protect yourself): Update your BIOS level to the latest version by following the instructions in the readme file. This issue only affects Lenovo products with BIOS firmware from AMI. Brands not listed, such as ThinkPad, do not use AMI firmware and are not affected by this vulnerability. Lenovo thanks Bruno Pujos of Sogeti ESEC R&D for reporting this issue.[…]

More info:

http://esec-lab.sogeti.com/posts/2016/05/30/smm-unchecked-pointer-vulnerability.html

https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/product_security/len_4710

Yuriy and Oleksandr at REcon

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Baring the system: New vulnerabilities in SMM of Coreboot and UEFI based systems
By: Yuriy Bulygin, Oleksandr Bazhaniuk

Previously, we discovered a number of vulnerabilities in UEFI based firmware including software vulnerabilities in SMI handlers that could lead to SMM code execution, attacks on hypervisors like Xen, Hyper-V and bypassing modern security protections in Windows 10 such as Virtual Secure Mode with Credential and Device Guard. These issues led to changes in the way OS communicates with SMM on UEFI based systems and new Windows SMM Security Mitigations ACPI Table (WSMT). This research describes an entirely new class of vulnerabilities affecting SMI handlers on systems with Coreboot and UEFI based firmware. These issues are caused by incorrect trust assumptions between the firmware and underlying hardware which makes them applicable to any type of system firmware. We will describe impact and various mitigation techniques. We will also release a module for open source CHIPSEC framework to automatically detect this type of issues on a running system.

https://recon.cx/2017/brussels/talks/baring_the_system.html

https://firmwaresecurity.com/2017/01/05/yuriy-to-speak-at-recon-brussels/

 

 

SMM training at WhiskeyCon

~ hucktech ~ Leave a comment

 

 

“This course is for people who want to find out more information about the most privileged and mysterious operating mode of x86 processors: System Management Mode. You will learn what it actually is, how to get there and what can be done by an attacker once his code is executed in SMM. Are there SMM rootkits in the wild? How feasible it is to create such rootkit? Can a kernel mode antivirus or a hypervisor protect against attacks from SMM? Can SMM rootkit be detected using memory forensics? Can you put an ultimate antivirus in SMM to fight SMM and kernel mode rootkits? We will cover these topics in much detail. There will be many lab exercises which will help you to better understand the ideas and techniques. By the end of the course you will have a good understanding of SMM security principles. You will also have a hands-on experience with implementing and detecting SMM rootkits.”

Look at the site for more about the author and the daily schedule.

Longkit: a UEFI/BIOS/SMM rootkit (at ICISSP’17)

~ hucktech ~ Leave a comment

ICISSP 2017, in Portugal, has an upcoming UEFI/BIOS/SMM rootkit presentation that sounds interesting:

Longkit: A UEFI/BIOS Rootkit in the System Management Mode. ICISSP 2017
Julian Rauchberger, Robert Luh, Sebastian Schrittwieser.

The theoretical threat of malware inside the BIOS or UEFI of a computer has been known for almost a decade. It has been demonstrated multiple times that exploiting the System Management Mode (SMM), an operating mode implemented in the x86 architecture and executed with high privileges, is an extremely powerful method for implanting persistent malware on computer systems. However, previous BIOS/UEFI malware concepts described in the literature often focused on proof-of-concept implementations and did not have the goal of demonstrating the full range of threats stemming from SMM malware. In this paper, we present Longkit, a novel framework for BIOS/UEFI malware in the SMM. Longkit is universal in nature, meaning it is fully written in position-independent assembly and thus also runs on other BIOS/UEFI implementations with minimal modifications. The framework fully supports the 64-bit Intel architecture and is memory-layout aware, enabling targeted interaction with the operating system’s kernel. With Longkit we are able to demonstrate the full potential of malicious code in the SMM and provide researchers of novel SMM malware detection strategies with an easily adaptable rootkit to help evaluate their methods.

http://www.icissp.org/

https://www.jrz-target.at/2016/12/22/paper-accepted-at-icissp-2017/

STM added to Tianocore

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Intel has submitted a patch to Tianocore to add STM support!

[edk2] [patch 0/4] Add STM (Smi Tranfer Monitor) support

This patch series is used to add STM support to UefiCpuPkg. More details about STM are described in:
http://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/manuals/64-ia-32-architectures-software-developer-manual-325462.pdf
https://firmware.intel.com/sites/default/files/STM_User_Guide-001.pdf
https://firmware.intel.com/sites/default/files/A_Tour_Beyond_BIOS_Launching_STM_to_Monitor_SMM_in_EFI_Developer_Kit_II.pdf

28 files changed, 6036 insertions(+), 65 deletions(-)

More info:
https://lists.01.org/mailman/listinfo/edk2-devel
https://firmwaresecurity.com/tag/stm/

 

Intel NUC’s Vulnerable to SMM Exploit

~ hucktech ~ Leave a comment

A new Intel Security Center advisory:

Intel® Branded NUC’s Vulnerable to SMM Exploit
Intel ID:      INTEL-SA-00057
Product family:      Intel® NUC Kits
Impact of vulnerability:      Elevation of Privilege
Severity rating:      Important
Original release:      Oct 03, 2016
Last revised:      Nov 15, 2016

Intel is releasing updated BIOS firmware for a privilege escalation issue. This issue affects Intel® NUC Kits listed in the affected products section below. The issue identified is a method that enables malicious code to gain access to System Management Mode (SMM). A malicious attacker with local administrative access can leverage the vulnerable BIOS to gain access to System Management Mode (SMM) and take full control of the platform. Intel products that are listed below should apply the update. Intel highly recommends updating the BIOS of all Intel® NUC’s to the recommended BIOS or later listed in the table of affected products. Intel would like to thank Security Researcher Dmytro Oleksiuk for discovering and reporting this issue.

https://security-center.intel.com/advisory.aspx?intelid=INTEL-SA-00057&languageid=en-fr

https://firmwaresecurity.com/2016/10/22/dmytro-takes-on-the-intel-nuc/

New UEFI patch that Enables SMM page level protection.

~ hucktech ~ Leave a comment

Jiewen Yao of Intel submitted a 6-part patch to Tianocore which adds SMM security. It appears it is the first version of the patch.

This series patch enables SMM page level protection. Features are:
1) PiSmmCore reports SMM PE image code/data information in EdkiiPiSmmMemoryAttributeTable, if the SMM image is page aligned.
2) PiSmmCpu consumes EdkiiPiSmmMemoryAttributeTable and set XD for data page and RO for code page.
3) PiSmmCpu enables Static Paging for X64 according to PcdCpuSmmStaticPageTable. If it is true, 1G paging for above 4G is used as long as it is supported.
4) PiSmmCpu sets importance data structure to be read only, such as Gdt, Idt, SmmEntrypoint, and PageTable itself.

tested platform:
1) Intel internal platform (X64).
2) EDKII Quark IA32
3) EDKII Vlv2  X64
4) EDKII OVMF IA32 and IA32X64.

  MdeModulePkg/Include: Add PiSmmMemoryAttributesTable.h
  MdeModulePkg/dec: Add gEdkiiPiSmmMemoryAttributesTableGuid.
  MdeModulePkg/PiSmmCore: Add MemoryAttributes support.
  UefiCpuPkg/dec: Add PcdCpuSmmStaticPageTable.
  UefiCpuPkg/PiSmmCpuDxeSmm: Add paging protection.
  QuarkPlatformPkg/dsc: enable Smm paging protection.
 36 files changed, 4513 insertions(+), 798 deletions(-)

For more information, see the posting on the edk2-devel list:
https://lists.01.org/mailman/listinfo/edk2-devel

Intel issues SMM patches for Intel NUCs

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Intel has updated NUCs for the recent SMM EoP issue. They updated their servers earlier.

https://security-center.intel.com/advisory.aspx?intelid=INTEL-SA-00057&languageid=en-fr

Recommendations:  Intel highly recommends updating the BIOS of all Intel® NUC’s to the recommended BIOS or later listed in the table of affected products.
 
Acknowledgements:  Intel would like to thank Security Researcher Dmytro Oleksiuk for discovering and reporting this issue.

As I understand it, this SMM issue impacts many systems, not just Lenovo and Intel-based products. If you have an OEM-based Intel system, check if they have updates. Lenovo and HP may have some, but it is still unclear about all the other OEMs and IBVs.