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A Single Flaw Broke Every Layer of Security in MacOS

A Single Flaw Broke Every Layer of Security in MacOS

Every time you shut down your Mac, a pop-up appears: “Are you sure you want to shut down your computer now?” Nestled under the prompt is another option most of us likely to overlook: the choice to reopen the apps and windows you have open now when your machine is turned back on. Researchers have now found a way to exploit a vulnerability in this “saved state” feature—and it can be used to break the key layers of Apple’s security protections.

The vulnerability, which is susceptible to a process injection attack to break macOS security, could allow an attacker to read every file on a Mac or take control of the webcam, says Thijs Alkemade, a security researcher at Netherlands-based cybersecurity firm Computest who found the flaw. “It’s basically one vulnerability that could be applied to three different locations,” he says.

After deploying the initial attack against the saved state feature, Alkemade was able to move through other parts of the Apple ecosystem: first escaping the macOS sandbox, which is designed to limit successful hacks to one app, and then bypassing the System Integrity Protection (SIP ), a key defense designed to stop authorized code from accessing sensitive files on a Mac.

Alkemade—who is presenting the work at the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas this week—first found the vulnerability in December 2020 and reported the issue to Apple through its bug bounty scheme. He was paid a “pretty nice” reward for the research, he says, although he refuses to detail how much. Since then Apple has issued two updates to fix the flaw, first in April 2021 and again in October 2021.

When asked about the flaw, Apple said it did not have any comment prior to Alkemade’s presentation. The company’s two public updates about the vulnerability are light on detail, but they say the issues could allow malicious apps to leak sensitive user information and escalate privileges for an attacker to move through a system.

Apple’s changes can also be seen in Xcode, the company’s development workspace for app creators, a blog post describing the attack from Alkemade says. The researcher says that while Apple fixed the issue for Macs running the Monterey operating system, which was released in October 2021, the previous versions of macOS are still vulnerable to the attack.

There are multiple steps to successfully launching the attack, but fundamentally they come back to the initial process injection vulnerability. Process injection attacks allow hackers to inject code into a device and run code in a way that’s different from what was originally intended.

The attacks are not uncommon. “It’s quite often possible to find the process injection vulnerability in a specific application,” Alkemade says. “But to have one that’s so universally applicable is a very rare find,” he says.

The vulnerability Alkemade found is in a “serialized” object in the saved state system, which saves the apps and windows you have open when you shut down a Mac. This saved state system can also run while a Mac is in use, in a process called App Nap.

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Technology

The Hacking of Starlink Terminals Has Begun

The Hacking of Starlink Terminals Has Begun

“From a high-level view, there are two obvious things that you could try to attack: the signature verification or the hash verification,” Wouters says. The glitch works against the signature verification process. “Normally you want to avoid shorts,” he says. “In this case we do it on purpose.”

Initially, Wouters attempted to glitch the chip at the end of its boot cycle—when the Linux operating system has fully loaded—but ultimately found it easier to cause the glitch at the start of the boot. This way was more reliable, Wouters says. To get the glitch to work, he says, he had to stop decoupling capacitors, which are used to smooth out the power supply, from operating. Essentially, the attack disables the decoupling capacitors, runs the glitch to bypass the security protections, and then enables the decoupling capacitors.

This process allows the researcher to run a patched version of Starlink’s firmware during the boot cycle and ultimately allows access to its underlying systems. In response to the research, Wouters says, Starlink offered him researcher-level access to the device’s software, although he says he declined as he had gone too deep with the work and wanted to build the modchip. (During testing, I hung the modified dish out of this research lab’s window and used a plastic bag as a makeshift waterproofing system.)

Starlink also issued a firmware update, Wouters says, that makes the attack harder, but not impossible, to execute. Anyone wanting to break into the dish in this way would have to put a lot of time and effort into doing so. While the attack isn’t as devastating as being able to take down satellite systems or connectivity, Wouters says it can be used to learn more about how the Starlink network operates.

“What I am working on now is communicating with the backend servers,” Wouters explains. Despite making the details of the modchip available for download on Github, Wouters does not have any plans to sell finished modchips, nor is he providing people with patched user terminal firmware or the exact details of the glitch he used.

As an increasing amount of satellites are launched—Amazon, OneWeb, Boeing, Telesat, and SpaceX are creating their own constellations—their security will come under greater scrutiny. In addition to providing homes with internet connections, the systems can also help to get ships online, and play a role in critical infrastructure. Malicious hackers have already shown that satellite internet systems are a target. As Russian troops invaded Ukraine, alleged Russian military hackers targeted the Via-Sat satellite system, deploying wiper malware that bricked people’s routers and knocked them offline. Around 30,000 internet connections in Europe were disrupted, including more than 5,000 wind turbines.

“I think it’s important to assess how secure these systems are because they are critical infrastructure,” Wouters says. “I don’t think it’s very far-fetched that certain people would try to do this type of attack because it is quite easy to get access to a dish like this.”

Update 5 pm ET August 10, 2022: After Wouters’ conference talk, Starlink published a six-page PDF explaining how it secures its systems. “We find the attack to be technically impressive, and it is the first attack of its kind that we are aware of in our system,” the paper says. “We expect attackers with invasive physical access to be able to take malicious actions on behalf of a single Starlink kit using its identity, so we rely on the design principle of ‘least privilege’ to constrain the effects in the broader system.”

Starlink reiterates that the attack needs physical access to a user terminal and emphasizes its secure boot system, which was compromised by the glitching process, is only impacted on that one device. Wider parts of the overall Starlink system are not impacted. “Normal Starlink users do not need to be worried about this attack affecting them, or take any action in response,” Starlink says.

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