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DCIFRTHS

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jan 25, 2008
1,315
658
Just got a 2017 Macbook Pro with 16GB Ram, 560 Radeon and 512 SSD. It was an unbeatable offer, so I couldn’t pass it up.

The person who owned it before me used it to live stream, and has installed different versions of free streaming and server software - only heaven knows what else on it. The machine has been reformatted, but I’m wondering if any of the free software could have compromised any of the firmware or controller chips on the computer.

I would like to use this as my main computer, so banking, password management and sensitive documents would be stored on it.

Can anyone advise me if there’s a chance that the computer could be compromised in any way (after a delete and reinstall) of the OS?

Thanks!
 
If you have reinstalled the OS, it is almost certainly fine. There are various vulnerabilities affecting the firmware and Intel CPUs themselves, but it would take a very sophisticated attacker to exploit them and that is unlikely.
 
If you have reinstalled the OS, it is almost certainly fine. There are various vulnerabilities affecting the firmware and Intel CPUs themselves, but it would take a very sophisticated attacker to exploit them and that is unlikely.
I appreciate the input.

Is there any way to verify if anything but Apple firmware is living somewhere on the machine?

While I know that checkra1n and checkm8 exploits are targeted toward A series chips, I was thinking that similar exploits could have been installed undercover / alongside the plethora of freeware that has been installed on this machine.

One of the server installs, or maybe an emulator (I can't remember) actually bricked the wireless card. Apple support thought it was hardware related, and setup a case to have it replaced. A full restore of the machine, before it was turned over to me, fixed it before the machine was sent to Apple.
 
If you have reinstalled the OS from recovery mode and wiped the SSD before install you are gold. The firmware is also checked and installed during OS install.
 
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