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by pritambaral 3584 days ago
They exploit Thunderbolt, whose insecure "All your memory are belong to us" model is known. I wonder what the attackers would use on a non-Thunderbolt laptop (say, a ThinkPad, or a regular Dell/HP/What-Have-You).

Of course, using an Apple laptop to demo this makes a lot of sense: they are popular, almost ubiquitous, and they provide an external vector to full, direct memory access. But I don't think the scare factor holds up on a non-Apple device.
2 comments
Avery3R 3584 days ago
Most laptops which don't have thunderbolt ports have a pci express card slot that's also vulnerable to DMA attacks.
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pritambaral 3584 days ago
Do you mean ExpressCard? I don't think I've seen a single laptop with an external PCIe slot.

Even so, neither ExpressCard or internal PCIe are used for generic, everyday connectivity (like projectors / external screens). Thunderbolt on Apple laptops is marketed to be used for those.

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achr2 3584 days ago
Thunderbolt-3 uses the USB-C port and is becoming prevalent in many non-apple latops.
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dogma1138 3584 days ago
USB-C isn't thunderbolt. The combine port is a different story but USB type-c is available for all USB revisions since 1.1.

USB 3.1 allows for comaptibility with TB under certain configurations, it also has a DMA and PCIe pass trough on its own.

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