Tag Archives: patching

Impressive iPhone Exploit

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/12/impressive-iphone-exploit.html

This is a scarily impressive vulnerability:

Earlier this year, Apple patched one of the most breathtaking iPhone vulnerabilities ever: a memory corruption bug in the iOS kernel that gave attackers remote access to the entire device­ — over Wi-Fi, with no user interaction required at all. Oh, and exploits were wormable­ — meaning radio-proximity exploits could spread from one nearby device to another, once again, with no user interaction needed.

[…]

Beer’s attack worked by exploiting a buffer overflow bug in a driver for AWDL, an Apple-proprietary mesh networking protocol that makes things like Airdrop work. Because drivers reside in the kernel — ­one of the most privileged parts of any operating system­ — the AWDL flaw had the potential for serious hacks. And because AWDL parses Wi-Fi packets, exploits can be transmitted over the air, with no indication that anything is amiss.

[…]

Beer developed several different exploits. The most advanced one installs an implant that has full access to the user’s personal data, including emails, photos, messages, and passwords and crypto keys stored in the keychain. The attack uses a laptop, a Raspberry Pi, and some off-the-shelf Wi-Fi adapters. It takes about two minutes to install the prototype implant, but Beer said that with more work a better written exploit could deliver it in a “handful of seconds.” Exploits work only on devices that are within Wi-Fi range of the attacker.

There is no evidence that this vulnerability was ever used in the wild.

EDITED TO ADD: Slashdot thread.

New Bluetooth Vulnerability

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/09/new-bluetooth-vulnerability.html

There’s a new unpatched Bluetooth vulnerability:

The issue is with a protocol called Cross-Transport Key Derivation (or CTKD, for short). When, say, an iPhone is getting ready to pair up with Bluetooth-powered device, CTKD’s role is to set up two separate authentication keys for that phone: one for a “Bluetooth Low Energy” device, and one for a device using what’s known as the “Basic Rate/Enhanced Data Rate” standard. Different devices require different amounts of data — and battery power — from a phone. Being able to toggle between the standards needed for Bluetooth devices that take a ton of data (like a Chromecast), and those that require a bit less (like a smartwatch) is more efficient. Incidentally, it might also be less secure.

According to the researchers, if a phone supports both of those standards but doesn’t require some sort of authentication or permission on the user’s end, a hackery sort who’s within Bluetooth range can use its CTKD connection to derive its own competing key. With that connection, according to the researchers, this sort of erzatz authentication can also allow bad actors to weaken the encryption that these keys use in the first place — which can open its owner up to more attacks further down the road, or perform “man in the middle” style attacks that snoop on unprotected data being sent by the phone’s apps and services.

Another article:

Patches are not immediately available at the time of writing. The only way to protect against BLURtooth attacks is to control the environment in which Bluetooth devices are paired, in order to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks, or pairings with rogue devices carried out via social engineering (tricking the human operator).

However, patches are expected to be available at one point. When they’ll be, they’ll most likely be integrated as firmware or operating system updates for Bluetooth capable devices.

The timeline for these updates is, for the moment, unclear, as device vendors and OS makers usually work on different timelines, and some may not prioritize security patches as others. The number of vulnerable devices is also unclear and hard to quantify.

Many Bluetooth devices can’t be patched.

Final note: this seems to be another example of simultaneous discovery:

According to the Bluetooth SIG, the BLURtooth attack was discovered independently by two groups of academics from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and Purdue University.