The EU is at it again. Recently Mozilla put out a position paper highlighting the latest dangerous move by busybody EU regulators who seem to think that they can magically regulate the internet without (1) understanding it, or (2) bothering to talk to people who do understand it. The issue is the Digital Identity Framework, which, in theory, is supposed to do some useful things regarding interoperability and digital identities. This could be really useful in enabling more end user control over identity and information (a key part of my whole Protocols, Not Platforms concept). But the devil is in the details, and the details are a mess.

It would force browsers to support a specific kind of authentication certificate — Qualified Web Authentication Certificates (QWACs) — but as Mozilla points out, that would be disastrous for security:

At the same time, the types of website certificates that browsers would be forced to accept, namely QWACs, are based on a flawed certificate architecture that is ill-suited for the security risks users face online today. In the years since the original eIDAS regulation was adopted in 2014, an increasing body of research has illustrated how the certificate architecture upon which QWACs are inspired – namely, extended validation certificates – lull individuals into a false sense of security that is often exploited for malicious purposes such as phishing and domain impersonation. For that reason, since 2019 no major browser showcases EV certificates directly in the URL address bar.

As such, should the revised Article 45 be adopted as is, Mozilla would no longer be able to honour the security commitments we make to the hundreds of millions of people who use our Firefox browser or any of the other browser and email products that also depend on Mozilla’s Root Program. It would amount to an unprecedented weakening of the website security ecosystem, and undercut the browser community’s ability to push back against authoritarian regimes’ interference with fundamental rights (see here and here for two recent examples).

As Mozilla notes, the EU can still fix this. Whether or not it does is an open question.

Source: EU’s Latest Internet Regulatory Madness: Destroying Internet Security With Its Digital Identity Framework | Techdirt

it’s also one of the few apps that offer end-to-end encryption by default. This means that no one other than you the other party can read your conversations. Even WhatsApp can’t read your conversations because it doesn’t have the key to un-encrypt your chats.

This was all true, except for one scenario: WhatsApp chats backed up to iCloud were all unencrypted, so if anyone got their hands on your iCloud backup, they could read all your messages pretty easily. But now, WhatsApp has an optional feature to protect your WhatsApp backups with the same two-factor authentication using a password or a secure key.

How to enable end-to-end encryption for WhatsApp backups over iCloud

Before we begin, you should know that WhatsApp end-to-end encryption depends on a password or a 64-digit secure key. If you lose your password, you won’t be able to restore your chats, so make sure you use a secure yet recognizable password. If you use something complicated, make sure to save it on your password manager (it can be iCloud Keychain or a third-party service like Bitwarden).

To get started, first update your WhatsApp application to the latest version. WhatsApp is slowly rolling this feature out to its two billion users, so if you don’t see it yet, try again in a couple of days.

Open WhatsApp, and from the “Settings” tab, go to “Chats.” Here, select “Chat Backups” and tap the “End-to-End Encrypted Backup” button. Tap the “Turn on” button and from the next screen, choose the “Create Password” option.

Source: Why You Should Encrypt Your WhatsApp Backups in iCloud

Rowhammer exploits that allow unprivileged attackers to change or corrupt data stored in vulnerable memory chips are now possible on virtually all DDR4 modules due to a new approach that neuters defenses chip manufacturers added to make their wares more resistant to such attacks.

Rowhammer attacks work by accessing—or hammering—physical rows inside vulnerable chips millions of times per second in ways that cause bits in neighboring rows to flip, meaning 1s turn to 0s and vice versa. Researchers have shown the attacks can be used to give untrusted applications nearly unfettered system privileges, bypass security sandboxes designed to keep malicious code from accessing sensitive operating system resources, and root or infect Android devices, among other things.

Further Reading

Once thought safe, DDR4 memory shown to be vulnerable to “Rowhammer”

All previous Rowhammer attacks have hammered rows with uniform patterns, such as single-sided, double-sided, or n-sided. In all three cases, these “aggressor” rows—meaning those that cause bitflips in nearby “victim” rows—are accessed the same number of times.

Bypassing all in-DRAM mitigations

Research published on Monday presented a new Rowhammer technique. It uses non-uniform patterns that access two or more aggressor rows with different frequencies. The result: all 40 of the randomly selected DIMMs in a test pool experienced bitflips, up from 13 out of 42 chips tested in previous work from the same researchers.

[…]

The effects of previous Rowhammer demonstrations have been serious. In one case, researchers were able to gain unrestricted access to all physical memory by flipping bits in the page table entry, which maps the memory address locations. The same research also demonstrated how untrusted applications could gain root privileges. In another case, researchers used Rowhammer to pluck a 2048-bit encryption key out of memory.

[…]

Source: DDR4 memory protections are broken wide open by new Rowhammer technique | Ars Technica

Intel has disclosed two high-severity vulnerabilities that affect a wide range of Intel processor families, allowing threat actors and malware to gain higher privilege levels on the device.

The flaws were discovered by SentinelOne and are tracked as CVE-2021-0157 and CVE-2021-0158, and both have a CVSS v3 score of 8.2 (high).

The former concerns the insufficient control flow management in the BIOS firmware for some Intel processors, while the latter relies on the improper input validation on the same component.

These vulnerabilities could lead to escalation of privilege on the machine, but only if the attacker had physical access to vulnerable devices.

The affected products, according to Intel’s advisory, are the following:

• Intel® Xeon® Processor E Family
• Intel® Xeon® Processor E3 v6 Family
• Intel® Xeon® Processor W Family
• 3rd Generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processors
• 11th Generation Intel® Core™ Processors
• 10th Generation Intel® Core™ Processors
• 7th Generation Intel® Core™ Processors
• Intel® Core™ X-series Processors
• Intel® Celeron® Processor N Series
• Intel® Pentium® Silver Processor Series

Intel hasn’t shared many technical details around these two flaws, but they advise users to patch the vulnerabilities by applying the available BIOS updates.

This is particularly problematic because motherboard vendors do not release BIOS updates often and don’t support their products with security updates for long.

Considering that 7th gen Intel Core processors came out five years ago, it’s doubtful that MB vendors are still releasing security BIOS updates for them.

As such, some users will be left with no practical way to fix the above flaws. In these cases, we would suggest that you set up a strong password for accessing the BIOS settings.

A third vulnerability affects cars

A third flaw for which Intel released a separate advisory on the same day is CVE-2021-0146, also a high-severity (CVSS 7.2) elevation of privilege flaw.

“Hardware allows activation of test or debug logic at runtime for some Intel(R) processors which may allow an unauthenticated user to potentially enable escalation of privilege via physical access.” – Intel’s advisory

This bug affects the following products:

Intel has released a firmware update to mitigate this flaw, and users will get it through patches supplied by the system manufacturer.

Positive Technologies, who discovered and reported the bug to Intel, says that the flaw could allow threat actors to gain access to highly sensitive information.

“One example of a real threat is lost or stolen laptops that contain confidential information in encrypted form,” says Mark Ermolov.

“Using this vulnerability, an attacker can extract the encryption key and gain access to information within the laptop. The bug can also be exploited in targeted attacks across the supply chain.”

“For example, an employee of an Intel processor-based device supplier could, in theory, extract the Intel CSME firmware key and deploy spyware that security software would not detect.”

Positive Technologies says that the flaw also affects several car models that use the Intel Atom E3900, including the Tesla Model 3.

Users should apply a BIOS update from the device vendor to address this flaw, so check your manufacturer’s website regularly.

[…]

Source: High severity BIOS flaws affect numerous Intel processors