UEFI Security In The News: Craigslist, Zimmer & Cyber-Security Meet Ups

Using a UEFI-based BIOS on a MacBook Pro/Air and forgot your password and live in New York, New Jersey or Connecticut? Craigslist to the rescue! From the ad:

REMOVAL PROCESS: the password removal process will NOT damage your Macbook or VOID your Apple warranty in any way we do not modify any hardware nor do we use any software to remove the password a professional external password analyser will be used to remove the EFI Firmware BIOS Password and/or the iCloud System Lock PIN Code the repair turnaround will take 1 HOUR

Not sure how this works and I don't have a Mac, but some people have done extensive reverse engineering to look at it and found it pretty solid. Barring access to a hardware flash programmer "...there is no way for an outsider to generate the codes to reset your Mac firmware. So please stop sending me emails and comments asking for it."

Meanwhile, everyone seems to be trying to hack the firmware, even to the point where firmware guys are starting to worry about how solid the firmware written by other guys really is. My friend and co-author Vincent Zimmer gives a pretty good round up of the current findings and presentations, including some of his own.

Meanwhile, the local chapter of CS2AI is sponsoring a series of security meetings that gathers local industry practitioners and educators together to discuss different topics surrounding IT and control-system security. Last time the focus was on "The Mind of a Cyber Attacker" The next topic will be Defensive Tools for Cyber-Security, hosted by Prof. Jun Dai at Sacramento State University. Recent sessions have been hosted by speakers from McAfee, Palo Alto Networks and Grimm. Good stuff, practical from the physical, hardware, software and network attacks.

Some OEMs are more paranoid than others. In the firmware world, that keeps us on our toes to engineer creative solutions that make systems buildable, shippable and usable but not vulnerable.