full-disclosure - Re: Firewire Attack on Windows Vista

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Message-ID: <20080306085437.3725ad80@wssyg114.sygroup-int.ch>
Date: Thu, 6 Mar 2008 08:54:37 +0100
From: Tonnerre Lombard <tonnerre.lombard@...roup.ch>
To: "Roger A. Grimes" <roger@...neretcs.com>
Cc: Full Disclosure <full-disclosure@...ts.grok.org.uk>,
	Bugtraq <bugtraq@...urityfocus.com>
Subject: Re: Firewire Attack on Windows Vista

Salut, Roger,

On Wed, 5 Mar 2008 16:30:35 -0500, Roger A. Grimes wrote:
> As somewhat indicated in the paper itself, these types of physical
> DMA attacks are possible against any PC-based OS, not just Windows.
> If that's true, why is the paper titled around Windows Vista?

That's very easy: because the specific attack was against Windows
Vista's activation mechanism.

The deficiencies of Firewire with regard to direct memory access have
been known for quite a while now. The purpose of the referenced attack
was specific to Windows Vista. It is of course also possible though to
steal GnuPG keys from the memory of a Solaris machine, of course,
that's in the nature of the beast, but this is not relevant to the
specific attack mentioned here.

May I also add that I am actually aware of patches from vendors which
can render this attack ineffective for most other OSes (Solaris, Linux,
etc.) - as far as I know, though, there is no such patch for Windows?
That might also be a reason why this attack was created and published
in the first place - like I said, the attack vector has been known for
ages now.

> [Disclaimer: I'm a full-time Microsoft employee.] 

Hi there. ;-)

				Tonnerre
-- 
SyGroup GmbH
Tonnerre Lombard

Solutions Systematiques
Tel:+41 61 333 80 33		Güterstrasse 86
Fax:+41 61 383 14 67		4053 Basel
Web:www.sygroup.ch		tonnerre.lombard@...roup.ch

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