Researchers detail Intel TXT hacks at Black Hat

Two security researchers fleshed out details Wednesday at the Black Hat conference in Washington of a method they disclosed earlier this year for circumventing Intel Corp.'s new Trusted Execution Technology (TXT) security software.

The two-stage attack against TXT (PDF document), which is designed to protect data on PCs, was disclosed in January by Joanna Rutkowska and Rafal Wojtczuk of security research firm Invisible Things Lab in Poland.

When first disclosed, they said they had discovered a design flaw in TXT and certain implementation errors in some associated Intel system software that allowed them to bypass any of TXT's security protections. They also released proof-of-concept code showing how an attacker could use their method to compromise Intel's implementation of the trusted boot process for Xen and Linux operating systems.

In their presentation at the Black Hat hacker conference Wednesday, the researchers offered more details on their attack method. The also noted that patching BIOS software would address the system software vulnerabilities, but they added that no easy measure was currently available for tackling the TXT problem.

Intel confirmed the problem, which affects mobile, desktop, and server motherboards, "without providing any more details about which exact models are vulnerable," the researches wrote in their presentation. "We suspect it might affect all recent Intel motherboards and BIOSes."

Intel's TXT, previously code-named LaGrande, is a relatively new technology designed to provide a trusted way for loading and launching system software such as an operating system kernel or a Virtualization Machine Monitor on a system.

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