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Re:Mac OS High Sierra automatically checks EFI firmware each... by burntrelish1273 on Sunday September 24, 2017 @09:25PM (#15327464)
HIDS/HIPS has always been problematic because of chicken-and-egg rootkitability (ie a rooted box scanning itself is tantamount to worthless), also clean image scanning has been extremely inconvenient. It would make more sense to have an secure OS in ROM that runs at boot and at various times which bypasses the installed OS and drivers, and can scan firmwares, microcode on various buses and critical files. Basically, hardware TripWire, but with an authoritative signatures database. And certainly, UEFI Secure/Measured Boot is complementary for defense-in-depth.

Also, it would be helpful if PCIe, HDMI, USB, Thunderbolt, etc. drivers ask permission of the user before automatically connecting devices inserted into PCs... basically a peripheral "firewall." There are too many buses that are happy to give up the FSB and PCIe-side without authorization. Hell, it would be even better if buses used some sort of minimal-but-essential PKI and encryption.

Re:Mac OS High Sierra automatically checks EFI firmware each... by colejohnson66 on Sunday September 24, 2017 @09:53PM (#15327561)
> It would make more sense to have an secure OS in ROM that runs at boot and at various times which bypasses the installed OS and drivers, and can scan firmwares, microcode on various buses and critical files.

Isn’t that what Intel ME is? The only difference being we don’t know what exactly it does?

Re:Mac OS High Sierra automatically checks EFI firmware each... by hdhzy on Sunday September 24, 2017 @11:51PM (#15327951)
> Also, it would be helpful if PCIe, HDMI, USB, Thunderbolt, etc. drivers ask permission of the user before automatically connecting devices inserted into PCs...

Thunderbolt 3 does exactly this (at least on Windows). When connected to new hardware it asks whether to approve it or not (e.g. for Dell dock I had to approve both the dock and the cable).