[Full-disclosure] Firewire Attack on Windows Vista

[Tim]

An anonymous list lurker asked me off-list to answer this question for
"public gratification":

> Can this feature be leveraged without drivers on the target system?
> IOW, if one just unloads (or doesn't load) the firewire driver, is it
> still exploitable?

No, I don't believe so.  At least on Linux, the drivers have to
explicitly open up access when they are loaded for the attack to work.
By the chipset access restrictions are prevent this.

Of course YMMV on particular pieces of hardware.  There's just one
vendor (Texas Instruments) who produces the vast majority of these
chipsets though, so I doubt there's a large amount of variation from
system to system.

tim