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Intel Offers Up Royalty-Free Thunderbolt 3 To USB Promoter Group

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  • #41
    USB has a much better security record in that regard. Unsurprisingly, as the attack surface of USB is pretty small anyway.
    Originally posted by microcode View Post
    With Thunderbolt, in theory only the operating system and the CPU vendors need to get it right; everyone else can screw up.
    No. The system firmware (BIOS/UEFI) is very essential to proper functioning of the IOMMU. Past attacks on Thunderbolt used weaknesses in the firmware suspend/resume implementation for example.

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    • #42
      microcode
      I just came across something which marcan42 (of fail0verflow / PS4 Linux fame) wrote a few weeks back:

      He is very adamant that the driver code is the weak link against malicious Thunderbolt devices.

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      • #43
        Originally posted by chithanh View Post
        He is very adamant that the driver code is the weak link against malicious Thunderbolt devices.
        Yes, I said what I did having read what he wrote. The firmware involvement is (in my opinion) potentially fairly minimal (until you start getting into booting from NVMe devices on Thunderbolt, or some such) compared to the OS (incl. drivers in my model of things, coming from a Linux perspective).

        But you're right that firmware is involved, and specifically at the times when you say, I think that there is nonetheless some hope that that will become a solved problem. :- )

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