But the fact that most comms cables, these days, have integrated chips, makes for a dangerous trust landscape. That’s something that we’ve known for quite some time.
BTW: I “got it right,” but not because of the checklist. I just knew that a single chip is likely a lot cheaper than a board with many components, and most counterfeits are about selling cheap shit, for premium prices.
But if it were a spy cable, it would probably look almost identical (and likely would have a considerably higher BOM).
I want to make a persistent implant/malware that survives OS reinstalls. You can also disable Intel (CS)ME and potentially use Coreboot as well, but I don’t want to deal with porting Coreboot to a new platform. I’m more interested in demonstrating how important hardware root of trust is.
I want to make a persistent implant/malware that survives OS reinstalls.
Look up Absolute Computrace Persistence. It's there by default in a lot of BIOS images, but won't survive a BIOS reflash with an image that has the module stripped out (unless you have the "security" of Boot Guard, which will effectively make this malware mandatory!)
I’m more interested in demonstrating how important hardware root of trust is.
You mean more interested in toeing the line of corporate authoritarianism.
As a power user, do I want boot guard on my personal PC? Honestly, no. And we’re in luck because a huge amount of consumer motherboards have a Boot Guard profile so insecure it’s basically disabled. But do I want our laptops at work to have it, or the server I have at a colocation facility to have it? Yes I do. Because I don’t want my server to have a bootkit installed by someone with an SPI flasher. I don’t want my HR rep getting hidden, persistent malware because they ran an exe disguised as a pdf. It’s valuable in some contexts.
That’s not what I got from their post. After all, they’re putting in some effort to hardware backdoor their motherboard, physically removing BootGuard. I read it as “if your hardware is rooted then your software is, no matter what you do.”
Try attacking NIC, server BMC or SSD firmware. You will achieve your goal without any hardware replacement needed.
You want to look into something called "Windows Platform Binary Table" [1]. Figure out a way to reflash the BIOS or the UEFI firmware for your target device ad-hoc and there you have your implant.
Is this how various motherboard manufacturers are embedding their system control software? I was helping a family friend with some computer issues and we could not figure out where the `armoury-crate` (asus software for controlling RGB leds on motherboard :() program kept coming from
"The O.MG Cable is a hand made USB cable with an advanced implant hidden inside. It is designed to allow your Red Team to emulate attack scenarios of sophisticated adversaries"
"Easy WiFi Control" (!!!!!)
"SOC2 certification"? Dawg, the call is coming from inside the house...
Helps corporate red teams in environments where the purchase department is... a bunch of loons.
I'm not too keen these days with FTDI's reputation for manipulating their Windows device drivers to brick clones. So, while I'm familiar with their IC, I don't give them any more money. The next time I need a USB to serial cable, I'll bust out KiCad to build it using one of the ubiquitous ARM microcontrollers with USB features built in. Of course, this is easier for me, since I can write my own Linux or BSD device driver as well. Those using OSes with signing restrictions on drivers would have a harder time, unless they chose to disable driver signing.
USB-serial adapters are not particularly special. Dozens of other manufacturers make them.
Why allow for newer processes on the counterfeit? They'd implement it using the least expensive, most mass produced chips possible, which are more likely to be cut from wafers hitting the sweet spot of size / feature and price crossover.
which is definitely the second
they could be regulated to expose their chip with transparent covering rather than plain dark wiring