The common wisdom when it comes to PCs and Apple computers is that the latter are much more secure. Particularly when it comes to firmware, people have assumed that Apple systems are locked down in ways that PCs aren’t.
Usually Apple's Mac computer are most secure till new vulnerability introduced to hack the apple's mac computer's. The security reseacher has proved that Mac system can also be hacked.
Two security researchers have developed a proof-of-concept computer worm for the first time that can spread automatically between MacBooks, without any need for them to be networked. Thunderstrike 2, the new proof-of-concept firmware attack is inspired by previously developed proof-of-concept firmware called Thunderstrike.
Trammell Hudson a security engineer and Xeno Kovah of firmware security consultancy Legbacore developed Thunderstrike Attack, which actullay took advantage of a vulnerability in Thunderbolt option ROM that could be used to infect Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) by allocating a malicious code int o the boot ROM of an Apple computer through infected Thunderbolt devices.
Thunderstrike 2 can be spread remotely, an attacker requires to have physical access to your Mac computer to put thunderstrike into your system. Thunderstrike reached to you via phishing emails, malicious web sites as well as through a peripheral connected to the Ethernet port or USB.
The researchers demonstrated the video given below:
"Thunderstrike 2 is really hard to detect, it’s really hard to get rid of, and it’s really hard to protect against something that’s running inside the firmware," Kovah toldWired.
"For most users that’s really a throw-your-machine-away kind of situation. Most people and organizations don’t have the wherewithal to physically open up their machine and electrically reprogram the chip."
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