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A cybersecurity researcher today uncovers a set of 7 new unpatchable hardware vulnerabilities that affect all desktops and laptops sold in the past 9 years with Thunderbolt, or Thunderbolt-compatible USB-C ports.

Collectively dubbed ‘ThunderSpy,’ the vulnerabilities can be exploited in 9 realistic evil-maid attack scenarios, primarily to steal data or read/write all of the system memory of a locked or sleeping computer—even when drives are protected with full disk encryption.

In a nutshell, if you think someone with a few minutes of physical access to your computer—regardless of the location—can cause any form of significant harm to you, you’re at risk for an evil maid attack.

According to Björn Ruytenberg of the Eindhoven University of Technology, the ThunderSpy attack “may require opening a target laptop’s case with a screwdriver, [but] it leaves no trace of intrusion and can be pulled off in just a few minutes.”

In other words, the flaw is not linked to the network activity or any related component, and thus can’t be exploited remotely.

“Thunderspy works even if you follow best security practices by locking or suspending your computer when leaving briefly, and if your system administrator has set up the device with Secure Boot, strong BIOS and operating system account passwords, and enabled full disk encryption,” the researcher said.

Besides any computer running Windows or Linux operating systems, Thunderbolt-powered Apple MacBooks, except retina versions, sold since 2011 are also vulnerable to Thunderspy attack, but partially.

images from Hacker News