(Comment copied over from another thread on this)<p>We generally assume that an attacker with physical access is going to win, but there are limits on that - the usual assumption is that it's going to take some time, and potentially leave evidence that can be picked up with enough attention to detail (such as screws not being in precisely the same alignment). This attack violates all of that - there's no physical modification of the machine, and it takes under a minute. That's the difference between an attack where you know the machine has left your control for some time and an attack that can take place while you're momentarily distracted.<p>The lack of response to this from Apple is deeply disappointing. The attack isn't technically persistent - rebooting the T2 will clear it. But the T2 doesn't reboot when the host OS does, and Apple haven't published any guidance on how to guarantee that it has been (eg, does holding the power button down for long enough cut power to the T2? Does performing an SMC reset? Both seem to, but is that guaranteed to be the case if the T2 is running malicious code?). In addition, the Blackbird SEP exploit probably means that we have to assume that all secrets kept in the Secure Enclave can be stolen - but we don't have a full enumeration of what those typically are, or what the total security impact of this is as a result.
I suspect two things:<p>1) Apple will have a problem with this. They generally don’t care about small-scale things like hackintosh, but this is a bit different. Selling a device to automagically hack a key logger into a modern Mac goes over their ‘line in the sand’, I’d expect. Openly selling it is ... brave, IMHO.<p>2) I can see some further work on their part to beef up the security over usb-pd. Perhaps the first thing is, as the article suggests, to force external attention from the user (hold down both shift keys...) but ultimately I could see it going to challenge/response and sha256 keys or similar.
Pre-T2 macs had eficheck to verify the EFI's integrity, but with the T2 being so secure, it's not necessary anymore: <a href="https://openradar.appspot.com/radar?id=5020911870672896" rel="nofollow">https://openradar.appspot.com/radar?id=5020911870672896</a>
I'm impressed with the engineering effort jailbreakers put into doing this.<p>And, Apple's USB-C thunderbolt port... it's the T1000 of ports.
This isn't persistent, right? At least on iPhones, checkra1n needs to run every boot to keep the device jailbroken. So if you saw the machine boot with nothing plugged in, you can trust it.
I like that they explicitly call on Apple to document the method of exploitation. Apple surely has internal documentation explaining how these debug commands work.
I'm still waiting for a jailbreak dongle for iOS that would easily allow booting in a jailbroken state. I know bootm8 was working on a full case but that seems to have died. A similar, persistent project for macs would be awesome.
> This is because in Mac portables the keyboard is directly connected to the T2 and passed through to macOS.<p>Oh god please tell me this is a joke... what were they thinking? Seriously?!<p>Bad enough most Windows laptops run the keyboard through the EC, but at least nobody outside secret services attacks them and they are diverse, while everyone and their dog is picking at the T2 chip.
Has anyone noticed that this newer MacBook Pro clearly exhibits "Staingate" anti-reflecting coating peeling off the screen? (You can see it in the video.)