The online services that were selling SBCO files were obviously fake, or downright illegal. ” Is Apple Support compromised?įurthermore, the researchers also discovered that there was no way to generate an SBCO file without having access to Apple's private encryption keys. The '3E6D568B' variable is special because if you remove it, the NVRAM will be reset to a default state where the firmware password is not set anymore. Or just locate the variable and erase or modify it directly without reflashing the whole contents.

“ If you have a SPI flasher and want to remove an Apple EFI firmware password, what you need to do is to dump the flash contents, remove the 'CBF2CC32' variable (you just need to flip a single bit on its name for example), and reflash the modified firmware. “ My work helped me determine that the EFI variable that contains the firmware password information is 'CBF2CC32.' ”

You can read the step-by-step reverse engineering process on fG!'s personal blog, but the good news is that he managed to find a way to do it. Since trusting this kind of services and running mysterious code on his laptop did seem like a good idea, the researcher set out to find out how SCBO and Apple's EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface) worked, and if he could find a way to bypass this process. Crooks are selling SCBO files online for $100įG! says he discovered shady online services that were providing SCBO files, but for a fee of $100. If you can't, then you're left on your own. This is all fine and dandy, but only if you can prove ownership of your device with the original sales receipt. Users give this code to Apple's staff, and they receive back an SCBO file, which they can then put on a USB flash drive they insert into their device, and they can thus remove the password. In case this happens, users can call Apple Support, and during boot-up, they're guided through the process of pressing five keys simultaneously to make a long code appear on their screen. Just like any password, users tend to forget it once in a while. Apple helps authorized users reset their firmware password A security engineer who goes by the name of fG!, specialized in Mac security and reverse engineering, has found a way to reset a Mac's firmware password without help from Apple's support team.Īpple allows iMac and MacBook users to set a password for their firmware so that no intruder can go in there and change core device settings.

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