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New vuln in Apple M-series allowing secret keys extraction can't be patched

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Re: New vuln in Apple M-series allowing secret keys extraction can't be patched

#131

Post by amckenna »

dmitrygr wrote: post #121

Clickbait. How can someone lacking the real docs for the CPU claim that this “can’t be patched”? How could they possibly know what chicken bits exist to disable what features?

> "After this story published, Apple told [Kim Zetter] they just posted the instruction about the DIT to their web site yesterday [MAR 21], timed to the public release of the researchers' findings, which means that developers were not told to do this fix prior to yesterday's release" [1]

The mitigation for the issue was posted in coordination with the publishing of the vulnerability. Given that the mitigation only applies to the M3 processor, it's reasonable to assume that there is no currently known mitigation for the M1 and M2 processors.

[1] https://www.zetter-zeroday.com/apple-chips/

Re: New vuln in Apple M-series allowing secret keys extraction can't be patched

#132

Post by dagmx »

sofixa wrote: post #67
eru wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in Singapore, everything that Apple does costs less than any car you could buy.

I know you're exaggerating because car prices in Singapore are very high (with good reason and kudos to the Singapore government for handling this well), but it's not true: There are a bunch of second hand cars below 6000 Singapore Dollars on this website[1], which is the price of the 64GB/1TB Mac Studio[2]. 1 - https://www.sgcarmart.com/used_cars/listing.php?MOD=&PRC=18&... 2 - https://www.apple.com/sg/shop/buy-mac/…

If you’re looking at second hand cars to make your point, shouldn’t you also look at second hand computers too?

Also why look at a mid tier upgrade spec when you’re looking at a bottom tier car?

Re: New vuln in Apple M-series allowing secret keys extraction can't be patched

#133

Post by StewardMcOy »

camkego wrote: post #29

The title to article ..."secret keys"... had me thinking that this vuln might be a path to extracting the private keys from the secure enclave. I'm not sure, but after a bit more reading, it sounds like private-keys or symmetric-keys can be extracted from other user-space or possibly kernel-space code execution. And NOT from the secure enclave. Just for what it's worth.

Correct. It's still very bad, but does not affect the secure enclave.

Re: New vuln in Apple M-series allowing secret keys extraction can't be patched

#134

Post by tzs »

xpuente wrote: post #128
tzs wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does this have to do with security through obscurity? This is an issue with cache prefetching.

It has to with the secure processor. Although you seems to ignore what is the TCB.

No, this only works on the regular processor cores. It's a cache timing attack that depends on the attack code and the targeted cryptographic code running on processors that share cache.

See the FAQ at https://gofetch.fail/

Re: New vuln in Apple M-series allowing secret keys extraction can't be patched

#135

Post by coolspot »

sofixa wrote: post #67
eru wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in Singapore, everything that Apple does costs less than any car you could buy.

I know you're exaggerating because car prices in Singapore are very high (with good reason and kudos to the Singapore government for handling this well), but it's not true: There are a bunch of second hand cars below 6000 Singapore Dollars on this website[1], which is the price of the 64GB/1TB Mac Studio[2]. 1 - https://www.sgcarmart.com/used_cars/listing.php?MOD=&PRC=18&... 2 - https://www.apple.com/sg/shop/buy-mac/…

You forgot one little thing that you need to buy a car, which is the Certificate of Entitlement that you need to own a car in Singapore.

So it is $6,000 (car) + $100,000 (CoE)

Re: New vuln in Apple M-series allowing secret keys extraction can't be patched

#136

Post by legutierr »

acdha wrote: post #102
legutierr wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Where possible try utilizing HSMs, yubikeys, secure enclaves - any specialized hardware that has been hardened to protect key material. Are there any circumstances where this hardware is accessible in the browser? As I understand, it is not generally available (if at all) for any cryptography you might want to do in the browser.

The browser doesn’t have direct access for JavaScript but can use those for supported features. This already happens for FIDO/WebAuth using a hardware root such as a Yubikey or Secure Enclave, and I believe SubtleCrypto uses hardware acceleration in some cases but I don’t remember if it makes it easy to know that. One thing to remember here, though, is that there isn’t anything special about key material in this atta…

> If we move all crypto to purpose-made hardware, someone could just start trying to target the messages to/from the crypto system.

This is one of the technical advantages of a blockchain-based system. As long as the keys are protected and signatures are generated in a secure environment, then the content of the message doesn't need to be secret to be secure.

It's not a solution to situations where privacy is desired, but if the reason for secrecy is simply to ensure that transactions are properly authorized (by avoiding the leakage of passwords and session information) then keeping the signature process secure should be sufficient even where general secrecy cannot be maintained.

Re: New vuln in Apple M-series allowing secret keys extraction can't be patched

#137

Post by vbezhenar »

adrianN wrote: post #51
tsimionescu wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the timing difference is extraordinarily subtle, far too small to measure compared to regular network timing noise.

That usually just means that you need to collect more data to filter out the network noise.

If you can collect enough data you can break any password just by trying.

"More data" might be not practical.

Re: New vuln in Apple M-series allowing secret keys extraction can't be patched

#138

Post by yencabulator »

layer8 wrote: post #63
boesboes wrote: post #57

Another day, another speculative execution vuln.. IMHO: all this speculation is a local maximum and it show we have fundamental issue with how we design 'computers'

It's security vs. speed. Can't have both. It's a bit like security vs. convenience.

Speculation is just a kludge trying to speed up a legacy architecture. It is possible to obtain speed even without speculation, just not without some other fresh ideas.

For example the vaporware Mill architecture is in-order on the CPU level but compilers can optimize to run code very concurrently.

Re: New vuln in Apple M-series allowing secret keys extraction can't be patched

#140

Post by AnthonyMouse »

planb wrote: post #101

Unfortunately, I don't think the real world applications of this exploit are explained anywhere. From skimming the paper , it looks like the attacker needs to be able to a) run code on the victim's machine and b) trigger the encryption process ("For our cryptographic attacks, we assume the attacker runs unprivileged code and is able to interact with the victim via nominal software interfaces, triggering it to perform…

Suppose you have a MITM attacker, e.g. hotel WiFi. You have any page not using TLS open in a background tab, which the attacker uses to inject javascript. Meanwhile there is a different page open via TLS which you're actively using, so your browser is constantly using the session key to encrypt the traffic. The attacker is now recording the encrypted session and after an hour they crack the session key and can use it to go back and decrypt the traffic.
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