Macs vulnerable to virtually undetectable virus that "can't be removed" | ZDNet

[Rob Seastrom]

Richard Barth <w3hwn at comcast.net> writes:

> [[http://www.zdnet.com/article/macs-vulnerable-to-virtually-undetectable-virus-that-cant-be-removed/]]

The salient sentence is:

   "Thunderbolt brings the PCIe bus to the outside world and at boot time
   the EFI firmware asks attached devices if they have any Option ROMs to
   be run."

Yes, that's right, plugging in a Thunderbolt device is like putting a
card in your computer.  Yes, it has access to *everything*.  Firewire
is similar in that you can have DMA access to the entire memory
footprint.

None of this is surprising to people who understand the technology at
a deep level.  Unfortunately, to someone like my dad (no dummy, a PhD
metallurgist), the HDMI port and the Thunderbolt are fairly
indistinguishable - hey, I even have a gizmo that plugs into a
Thunderbolt port and gives me HDMI, so how *can't* they be the same?

-r