Security

Intel Management Engine deep dive

Understanding the ME at the OS and hardware level
Borg
Peter Bosch
Reverse engineering a system on a chip from sparse documentation and binaries, developing an emulator from it and gathering the knowledge needed to develop a replacement for one of the more controversial binary blobs in the modern PC.
The Intel Management Engine, a secondary computer system embedded in modern chipsets, has long been considered a security risk because of its black-box nature and high privileges within the system. The last few years have seen increasing amounts of research into the ME and several vulnerabilities have been found. Although limited details were published about these vulnerabilities, reproducing exploits has been hard because of the limited information available on the platform. The ME firmware is the root of trust for the fTPM, Intel Boot Guard and several other platform security features, controlling it allows overriding manufacturer firmware signing, and allows implementing many background management features. I have spent most of past year reverse engineering the OS, hardware and links to the host (main CPU) system. This research has led me to create custom tools for manipulating firmware images, to write an emulator for running ME firmware modules under controlled circumstances and allowed me to replicate an unpublished exploit to gain code execution. In this talk I will share the knowledge I have gathered so far, document my methods and also explain how to go about a similar project. I also plan to discuss the possibility of an open source replacement firmware for the Management Engine. The information in this talk covers ME version 11.x, which is found in 6th and 7th generation chipsets (Skylake/Kabylake era), most of the hardware related information is also relevant for newer chipsets.

Additional information

Type lecture
Language English

More sessions

12/27/19
Security
Borg
Nowadays, Windows is still the most popular OS used in the world. It's very important for red teams / attackers to maintain the authority after they get into the OS by penetration test. So they need a vulnerability to hide in windows to escalate their account to system privilege.
12/27/19
Security
Hannes Mehnert
Dijkstra
Is the way we run services these days sustainable? The trusted computing base -- the lines of code where, if a flaw is discovered, jeopardizes the security and integrity of the entire service -- is enormous. Using orchestration systems that contain millions of lines of code, and that execute shell code, does not decrease this. This talk will present an alternative, minimalist approach to secure network services - relying on OCaml, a programming language that guarantees memory safety - composing ...
12/27/19
Security
littlelailo
Eliza
This talk is about running unsigned code at boot on iOS 11. I will demonstrate how you can start out with a daemon config file and end up with kernel code execution.
12/27/19
Security
Will Scott
Ada
It is easier to chat online securely today than it ever has been. Widespread adoption of signal, wire, and the private mode of WhatsApp have led a broader recognition of the importance of end-to-end encryption. There's still plenty of work to be done in finding new designs that balance privacy and usability in online communication.
12/27/19
Security
nba::yoh
Dijkstra
The 3DS is reaching end of life but has not revealed all its weaknesses yet. This talk will go through the process of reverse engineering an undocumented communication protocol and show how assessing hard-to-reach features yields dangerous results, including remote code execution exploits!
12/27/19
Security
Samuel Groß
Ada
So called “0-click” exploits, in which no user interaction is required to compromise a mobile device, have become a highly interesting topic for security researchers, and not just because Apple announced a one million dollar bug bounty for such exploits against the iPhone this year. This talk will go into the details of how a single memory corruption vulnerability in iMessage was remotely exploited to compromise an iPhone. The insights gained from the exploitation process will hopefully help ...
12/27/19
Security
Ada
Herzstück der digitalen Gesundheitsversorgung für 73 Millionen Versicherte ist die hochsichere, kritische Telematik-Infrastruktur mit bereits 115.000 angeschlossenen Arztpraxen. Nur berechtigte Teilnehmer haben über dieses geschlossene Netz Zugang zu unseren medizinischen Daten. Ein "Höchstmaß an Schutz" also, wie es das Gesundheitsministerium behauptet? Bewaffnet mit 10.000 Seiten Spezifikation und einem Faxgerät lassen wir Illusionen platzen und stellen fest: Technik allein ist auch ...