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Comment by belter | Hacker News Reader

Not at all. I can turn on your airgapped computer from the street without getting into your building...

Intel Management Engine - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Management_Engine

"Several weaknesses have been found in the ME. On May 1, 2017, Intel confirmed a Remote Elevation of Privilege bug (SA-00075) in its Management Technology.[36] Every Intel platform with provisioned Intel Standard Manageability, Active Management Technology, or Small Business Technology, from Nehalem in 2008 to Kaby Lake in 2017 has a remotely exploitable security hole in the ME"

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/developer/tools/in-b...

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And how do you establish the connection to deploy your remote privilege escalation exploit against the Intel Management Engine?

Hey I am not ChatGPT :-) But the answer has three parts:

1- "...The Intel Management Engine always runs as long as the motherboard is receiving power, even when the computer is turned off..."

2- The Intel Management Engine is the remote privilege escalation.(Read on the known and unpublished vulnerabilities).

3- Over-the-Air Firmware Updates...

If I say more we both will end on a secure facility.

>3- Over-the-Air Firmware Updates...

Mate I feel like you're getting your security know-how from watching Mission Impossible.

"Over-the-Air" doesn't actually mean you can magically beam SW updates wirelessly through the air to the Intel chip like in the hacker/spy movies, as airgapped networks, as per name, don't have wireless cards.

Intel ME still requires a network connection to the internet/network from which you want to apply the update. If you're on an airgapped network this becomes impossible to do without first breaching the airgapped network physicality, but this is not what happened according to the article, they just compromised some employee Microsoft/O365 account which is on the less secure network anyway and probably stole whatever IP they could find shared through the e-mail accounts and on Sharepoint.

Maybe an official source will be good enough for you: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/business/enterprise-...

Don't know what you saw in there but all that material disproves your claims.

Wait, I swear I'm not being intentionally daft, but in this scenario my air-gapped system has a (intel) wireless card? And we are certain the ME can manage this wireless card? And is actively listening for a wireless update while 'off'? From an unauthenticated connection?

>in this scenario my air-gapped system has a (intel) wireless card?

If you have a wireless card then your system was never airgapped to begin with. Parent makes some wild confusions.

See page 5 on how the CPU has now just become another peripheral. Notice the Out-of-Band Wireless into the Motherboard - https://recon.cx/2014/slides/Recon%202014%20Skochinsky.pdf

Is dismounting your Motherboard what you mean by not having a card?

>Notice the Out-of-Band Wireless

That's just the wireless controller on the chip but its not enough to have wireless communication actually work. You still need a wireless PHY which modulates the digital signal into radio waves, and an antennae attached to actually have wifi. On it's on it does nothing, it's just a piece of silicon that can't achieve radio communication.

Your are late for your Infosec Class...

"AIR-FI: Generating Covert Wi-Fi Signals from Air-Gapped Computers" - https://arxiv.org/abs/2012.06884

"In this paper, we show that attackers can exfiltrate data from air-gapped computers via Wi-Fi signals. Malware in a compromised air-gapped computer can generate signals in the Wi-Fi frequency bands. The signals are generated through the memory buses - no special hardware is required."

You haven't read it then. The premise of that paper is stupid. It assumes you already physical breached that airgapped network (which is the hardest part to do) to insert that malware in the first place.

You are the ruin of TEMPEST vendors...

TEMPEST is to pull data from a remote computer. I listen to the power grid to decode what you're typing, I monitor RF to see what you're typing and what's on your screen. All these computer peripherals are radio transmitters that can be snooped on. They're also one way only

The notion that I am going to establish any kind of foothold in your system that's properly air gapped via TEMPEST is silly.

FirmwareBurner, let's rejoice in the realization that our jobs are secure :-)

That paper is about sending out signals by writing to memory at a cadence that causes WiFi-band emissions from the memory bus traces on the motherboard. As other have pointed out, doing this requires first compromising the machine.

But, more importantly, the IME needs to be able to receive a signal to update, not transmit.

See slide 26 and 27. Bugs re-enable what was possible and now said not possible anymore.(I say, not the presentation) - https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2017/Fahrplan/system...

If you don't add an antenna to your airgapped computer, you need physical access to some copper.

If you do add an antenna to your 'airgapped' computer, well, just don't.

Is there a third way?

The IME vulnerability referenced on Wikipedia still uses the computer's network.

And to the IoT reference - such a computer wouldn't be (or rather shouldn't be) regarded as airgapped.

I don't think you understand what "air-gapped" actually means

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