Malware is the short form for Malicious Software and is basically software that allows attackers to infect a computer system or device to steal information, disrupt operations or gain access to sensitive data. It is a general term that includes viruses, worms, trojans, spyware, rootkits etc. (Cisco, 2021)
Conceptually the foundations for creating malware were laid almost simultaneously with the creation of the first computers. In 1951, John von Neumann proposed methods on how to create self-replicating automata (Neumann, 1951) and a few years later in 1959 Lionel Penrose published his paper on ‘Self-Reproducing Machines’ this paper was used as the basis for creating replicating machine code that were the basis of the later generations of malware. In 1970’s the creeper virus infected the ARPANET (Milošević, 2013) followed shortly after by Rabbit (Milošević, 2013) which spread rapidly to computers and created copies of itself overloading the machine and impacting system performance. (Milošević, 2013)
In the 1986, the first malware called Brain.A that targeted the PC platform was released. (Milošević, 2013) It used floppy disks as the infection mechanism by infecting the boot sector of every floppy disk used in an infected computer. Other viruses of the time used similar mechanisms to propagate and were quite prevalent by the measures of the time. Once Microsoft Windows was released viruses were created that targeted the new operating system with WinVir being the first virus for the new operating system, it gained persistence by modifying the Windows Executable files. (Milošević, 2013) It spread to new systems over floppy disks.
For almost a decade, infected disks and CD’s remained the primary method of infection for computers. In 1998 this changed with the release of Happy99 in late 1998 that spread via email attachments. Another popular vector for virus infections was macro viruses that infected Microsoft word files which were shared frequently with other users allowing the virus to spread. With the increasing popularity of the Internet, the new malware created during this time leveraged the internet as a transmission vector.
In early 2000, Code Red worm was created that leveraged vulnerabilities in the IIS webservers to propagate. (Milošević, 2013) This opened a new infection vector where the malware would scan for and exploit systems running vulnerable software.
Over the years, malware has become more and more common and has evolved to gain persistence using multiple methods such as using rootkits to infect the OS kernel and other such methods. The one constant throughout the years was that we could clean up a malware infection by formatting the infected drive and restoring from a clean backup. As long as the backup and the installation media were clean we could be confident that the infection was cleared.
Unfortunately, this is no longer the case with new strains of malware using sophisticated techniques to gain persistence using the computer firmware.
A. UEFI malware – The early years
UEFI rootkits were referenced in various leaks and were considered mostly theoretical. The Hacking Team referenced something called ‘rkloader’ in their internal presentations and the Vault7 leaks referenced ‘DerStarke’ which was an EFI/UEFI boot implant. But there was no real evidence of these being used so they were considered mostly theoretical for the most part.
This changed in 2018 when the first rootkit that leveraged the UEFI to achieve persistence was discovered. This malware called Lojax was created by the Sednit APT group. It used a malicious UEFI module written into the SPI flash memory to ensure that it was able to execute malware during the boot up process. (ESET Research, 2018)
B. UEFI Malware – Infecting SPI flash memory
The LoJax malware used the kernel driver RwDrv.sys to access the UEFI settings. The driver is distributed with RWEverything, a freeware utility that can read the BIOS information in most computers. (ESET Research, 2018)
The malware used this driver to read the contents of the SPI flash memory into a file, by running a file called ReWriter_binary.exe. The data in the SPI is stored in volumes using the Firmware File System (FFS). It then parses the volues to search for the Ip4Dxe file. This file along with DXE Core is then modified to add the malicious UEFI module to it post which the entire file is written back to the SPI memory. If the configuration allows write access to SPI the malware immediately writes to the SPI memory but if write access is disabled it exploited a race condition vulnerability in the BIOS locking mechanism to bypass the write protection in SPI flash memory. (CERT, 2015)
C. MoonBounce: UEFI Bootkit
The MoonBounce Bootkit is the third instance of malware that uses UEFI to gain persistence, with Lojax and MosaicRegressor being the other two instances where it was used.
MoonBounce is a lot more sophisticated than the previous iterations and it executes completely in the system memory without writing anything to the hard drive making it a lot harder to detect than the previous iterations of the malware. It stages the execution and deployment of payloads over the internet allowing the attacker to deploy payloads on the system to achieve specific tasks.
MoonBounce was detected in spring 2021 and like the previous iterations attacks the DXE Core module in UEFI to infect the SPI Memory.
D. Using TPM Module & Trusted Computing to protect against this attack
The TPM Module in the modern machines is designed to provide hardware-based, security-related functions and allows the system to secure the system using integrated cryptographic keys.
If TPM is enabled and is being used correctly then it gives the system a way to ensure that all firmware and boot files are unmodified. If any of the files are modified then they will not pass the cryptographic check and the boot process will be halted. This would prevent the infected SPI memory from being loaded and would warn the defenders that their system has been breached.
Unfortunately, it is possible to disable the TPM chip for historical compatibility reasons, so the malware can do the same. One of the ways to disable the check and bypass the Secure Boot & TPM check is to modify the registry files in Windows. The steps to do so are very simple and are shown below (Tibbetts, 2021):
- At the run prompt type in regedit, and press Enter.
- Go to Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup
- Right-click on Setup and click New > Key. Name that LabConfig
- Click on LabConfig, then right-click on the right pane, and click New > DWORD (32-bit Value).
- Name the entry as BypassTPMCheck and change its Value data to 1
- Create two more DWORDS and change the Value data to 1 just like you did above and name them BypassRAMCheck and BypassSecureBootCheck.
This removes the check for Secure Boot and while it can be desired at times it does open up the system to risk so should only be used for specific use cases where no other option is available.
Protecting against malware using firmware level persistence
To protect against this threat, we need to ensure that all components of the operating system and software on the computer are patched and updated to the latest version. We should enable end-point monitoring and IDS on the network to detect infection attempts. This will allow us to detect the malware before it infects the system and block it pre-emptively. The internet and email gateways should scan all incoming files to detect and block malware. In addition to the standard precautions to protect against malware, we should also ensure that all systems on the network are running the latest version of the UEFI/BIOS available.
Unfortunately, the remediation of the security issues in UEFI is a hard problem and doesn’t have an easy solution. So, the best way to protect against the threat is to try to prevent the system from getting infected in the first place.
Another option to detect infected SPI Memory is to create a tool that periodically creates a dump of the SPI memory and compares the checksum of the dump with a known clean dump. If the values don’t match then there is a high probability that the memory is infected and the administrators can then take steps to clean the firmware by flashing it with a known clean version of the firmware.
With the new methods of persistence available to the malware writers the best way to protect the assets is to try to ensure that you prevent the infection from happening in the first place. Once the machine is infected the task becomes harder and we would need to spend extra time and effort to clean and restore the systems to a clean state.
Done correctly this will decrease the risk of data exfiltration but no technique to detect infection is perfect so a lot of review and audits need to be done on a periodic basis to ensure that the system is still secure.
References
CERT. (2015, January 5). CERT/CC Vulnerability note vu#766164. VU#766164 – Intel BIOS locking mechanism contains race condition that enables write protection bypass. Retrieved March 21, 2022, from https://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/766164
Cisco. (2021, July 30). What is malware? – definition and examples. Cisco. Retrieved March 21, 2022, from https://www.cisco.com/c/en_in/products/security/advanced-malware-protection/what-is-malware.html
ESET Research. (2018, October 9). Lojax: First UEFI rootkit found in the wild, courtesy of the Sednit Group. WeLiveSecurity. Retrieved March 21, 2022, from https://www.welivesecurity.com/2018/09/27/lojax-first-uefi-rootkit-found-wild-courtesy-sednit-group/
Neumann, J. V. (1951). Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Theory of Self Replicating Automata. Retrieved March 21, 2022, from https://cba.mit.edu/events/03.11.ASE/docs/VonNeumann.pdf
Tibbetts, T. (2021, July 10). How to bypass secure boot & trusted platform module. Providing Free and Editor Tested Software Downloads. Retrieved March 21, 2022, from https://www.majorgeeks.com/content/page/bypass_tpm.html.
This was a paper for my Class in Q1 2022 which is why it is more formal than my usual posts.
