Micro-Renovator: Bringing Processor Firmware up to Code

Presented at DEF CON 26 (2018), Aug. 12, 2018, 1 p.m. (20 minutes).

The mitigations for Spectre highlighted a weak link in the patching process for many users: firmware (un)availability. While updated microcode was made publicly available for many processors, end-users are unable to directly consume it. Instead, platform and operating system vendors need to distribute firmware and kernel patches which include the new microcode. Inconsistent support from those vendors has left millions of users without a way to consume these critical security updates, until now. Micro-Renovator provides the ability to apply microcode updates without modifying either platform firmware or the operating system, through simple (and reversible) modifications to the EFI boot partition.

Presenters:

• Matt King - Hacker
  Matt is a security geek responsible for ensuring platform and firmware trust at a cloud service provider, and dedicates an inordinate amount of time to updating firmware as a result. He has pen tested a broad range of systems as a product security validation lead at a prominent processor vendor, and has a history of rendering all manner of computing devices inoperable.

Links:

• https://defcon.org/html/defcon-26/dc-26-speakers.html#King
• https://infocon.org/cons/DEF CON/DEF CON 26/DEF CON 26 video and slides/DEF CON 26 - Matt King - Micro-Renovator Bringing Processor Firmware up to Code.mp4
• https://infocon.org/cons/DEF CON/DEF CON 26/DEF CON 26 video and slides/DEF CON 26 - Matt King - Micro-Renovator Bringing Processor Firmware up to Code.srt (subtitles)
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nN1f8gE7rV0

Similar Presentations:

• 44CON 2017 / Checking BIOS protections offline with just the firmware updates
• Black Hat USA 2022 / Custom Processing Unit: Tracing and Patching Intel Atom Microcode
• DEF CON 31 (2023) / Backdoor in the Core - Altering the Intel x86 Instruction Set at Runtime