Welcome back to the RC3 on the R3S stage in Munheim. Our social media channels for asking questions for the next talks are RC3-R3S on Hackend IRC, the hashtag RC3R3S on Twitter and Mastodon and the Mastodon handle at R3S at chaos.social. Up next is Björn Reitenberg who is a master student at the Eindhoven University of Technology. He is a vulnerability researcher for hardware and firmware and the talk is related to master's thesis and he played around with lightning. Yeah, so please enjoy when lightning strikes thrice, breaking Thunderbolt 3 security. It's really great to be here. This is my first time at CCC, so it's an incredible honor that I can share my research here with you. My name is Björn Reitenberg. I'm a vulnerability researcher, mainly interested in hardware and firmware security, sandboxing and virtualization. I'm also a master student in computer science at Eindhoven University of Technology and the work that we're presenting today is part of my master's thesis. So let's talk about Thunderbolt. Well, Thunderbolt is a hard performance for proprietary IO protocol developed in 2011 by Intel and Apple. And well, it's PCI Express-based and the device is possessed what is called Direct Memory Access. Now I will go into these terms in a little bit but for now you could say that based on these technologies, Thunderbolt is really the first external interconnect that allows use cases such as connecting external GPUs to a laptop or connecting 5K monitors or accessing hard speed external storage at its maximum performance. Now the first two versions were mostly exclusive to Max and used to mini-displayport form factor. Thunderbolt 3 is the first version to be widely adopted among both PCs and Macs but uses the USB-C for factor instead. And well, thereby also aside from Thunderbolt devices also allows connecting DisplayPort and USB-C devices. Right, so PCI Express, I already mentioned it. PCI Express is essentially the core technology that allows connecting your CPU to the peripherals inside your system. And it's basically a packet switch network that has many similarities to Ethernet consisting in this case of four components. So let's briefly go through them. Now the root complex essentially connects the CPU to the PCI Express network and the switches in turn provide some means to divide bandwidth both in the sense of time and actual throughput. Then there's the actual endpoints. And if you're using hardware from back in the old days then you might be able to use them by means of a so-called PCI Express to legacy bridge. So the endpoints will be mostly familiar to you and they can be anything from a GPU to a USB controller to an Internet or Wi-Fi NIC. Now, when a CPU requests data from a third-party device there are essentially two methods to do this. And the first method which we see on the left is called program IO. Now in program IO, basically what happens is the CPU issues a reach request to the third-party device. Now the third-party device will require some time to get the requested data. And meanwhile the CPU will keep polling the status from this device. Now at some point the device will be ready and then the CPU will copy the data from the device into its own system RAM and then move on to the next instruction. Now, eventually a second method was developed which is called direct memory access and that's what we see on the right. The first step in DMA is that the CPU issues a DMA read command and well it can immediately move on to the next instruction that is not dependent on the data that's being requested. Now at some point the data will be made available by the third-party device but this time the device will copy the data directly into system RAM and then raise an interrupt with the CPU. Now in a way DMA is you could say the cornerstone technology to PCI Express. So for example if the CPU requests data from a SATA SSD then the SATA controller will fetch the data from that SSD and place it directly into system RAM and then finally raise an interrupt with the CPU. Now DMA is a very powerful concept and basically only because it puts the burden of copying the data into system RAM on the device. From a user's perspective this is of course great because this means lower latencies and much higher bandwidth. From a security perspective this could pose a threat and this was actually the case with Thunderbolt 1. So with Thunderbolt 1 only attacker had to do was connect a malicious device and then it would immediately get unrestricted read and write memory access which in turn would enable them to access data from encrypted drives and even gaining persistent access for example by installing a root git. Now DMA attacks are generally well understood. First started with FireWire back in 2004 and over the years gradually moved on to PCI-X Plus including all of its form factors such as a stress card and two and eventually Thunderbolt. Now when Hollywood wants to show you what a hacker looks like this is the kind of picture that you will typically see. But what you should be actually looking out for is the person looking like this while the person in the background of course. So the threat model that we're talking about tonight is brief physical access to victim systems also known as an evil maid attack and some of the example scenarios that you can think of are for example, laptops that is locked or set to sleep and they're being left unattended in the hotel room or desktop systems sitting in an office and at some point a cleaning crew comes in and has brief unfettered access. So over the years the industry developed several measures against this so-called opportunistic physical access. So let's briefly go through them. First one is really simple you put a password or your bias so when the attacker gets all of your laptop they cannot change any of the system settings. Second one is called secure boot. Secure boot basically verifies the entire boot chain starting from the OS boot loader all the way to the kernel and the five strivers. Boot card focuses on critically verifying the bias itself. There's full disk encryption. Well, if you enable full disk encryption and the attacker gets all of your laptop well they could disassemble the SSD from it but they still would not be able to read the data unless they know the correct password. And finally in terms of Thunderbolt well into introduce what they call security levels and security levels are intended to protect the entire thing that you see right here. All right, so let's dive a little bit deeper into the Thunderbolt security architecture. Basically security levels is an access control system. So for example, if you have a Thunderbolt powered hard drive and you attach it to your laptop for the first time then you will get a pop-up and the pop-up will let you identify the device. Now at some point you will choose to authorize the device and then when the second time or any subsequent times when you attach this Thunderbolt hard drive it will start working immediately without prompting you again. Right, so Thunderbolt security levels they rely on Thunderbolt devices authenticated to the host and the devices do this using the parameters shown right here. The most important one being the universally unique ID or UUID. Now this number is intended to like the name says uniquely identify any single Thunderbolt device in the world and it's also defined to be fused in silicon so it shouldn't be easy to change. Right, so security levels is a multilevel system. As a user you can select any of these in the BIOS so let's quickly go through them. There's SL0 which means no security and that's basically the same situation as with Thunderbolt 1. There's SL1 which means that device authorization is based on the UUID. SL2 is similar to SL1 but adds what Indokal's cryptographic device authentication. SL3 disables Thunderbolt but still allows USB-C and display port devices. Now some newer systems supports SL4 which is intended for use with Thunderbolt docks. So when you connect to dock you cannot connect any additional devices through that dock via so-called DC chaining. And if you're using SL1 or SL2 you get pre-book protection for free. So essentially that means that at boot time you can start using devices immediately and all the other devices will be rejected. Right, so security levels, they're mostly known for protecting against DNA attacks specifically the device to host DNA attacks but since it prevents PCIe endpoints from accessing the PCIe domain it protects against a lot more PCIe inherent attack factors as well such as peer-to-peer DNA attacks and PCIe ID spoofing to target vulnerable device drivers. And finally of course TLP source ID spoofing. So in essence security levels is really a powerful and much needed protection scheme. So introducing ThunderSpy. Well previous research before security levels mainly focused on PCIe level DNA attacks to compromise Thunderbolt security. After the introduction of security levels they mostly focused on tricking the user into authorizing malicious devices. Now ThunderSpy is a new class of vulnerabilities that really breaks Thunderbolt protocol security thereby being the first attack on Thunderbolt security levels. And so what we're presenting today is seven vulnerabilities and nine practical scenarios to exploit them. So the first red step in your research was to find out how Thunderbolt works and well Thunderbolt is a proprietary standard. So if you try to look at protocol specifications you will not find them. And if you try to find diagrams that would tell you what the hardware architecture is like you will not find it higher. So the first thing that we did was dissecting Thunderbolt devices and Thunderbolt equipped systems. Now eventually we came up with this diagram that I'm showing here for future research. So starting with the Thunderbolt host controller on the PC end. Well the Thunderbolt host controller connects to the PCH and the DGPU and ITPU take care of generating a discord signal. On the other hand there is the USB power delivery controller which multiplexes between USB signaling for the PCH and Thunderbolt as appropriate. On the device side we kind of see a merit version of what we see on the PC. So the Thunderbolt signal comes in gets the multiplex on two PCI Express on the one end and if it's a device with two ports Thunderbolt on the other which in turn allows connecting a another Thunderbolt device or a USB-C or just the port device. Right so let's have a look at some Thunderbolt devices. We'll look at various Thunderbolt devices starting from simple Thunderbolts to ISADA adapters to storage solutions, Thunderbolt docks and eventually EGPUs. They were pretty much all the same but this NetStore NVMe enclosure had a really nice clean PCB layout so that's why I'm showing it right here. Our prime suspect is of course in the top right corner a Intel Thunderbolt 3 host controller and there is a USB power delivery controller one for each Thunderbolt port. There's a spy flash which we'll be talking about a lot more later and an ISQUARE-C interface. Now if you have an electronics background you probably know what that means. We could get some information from it and there's an interface which appears to be JTAC but to answer your question no it doesn't work, sorry. All right so the Thunderbolt controller this is really an interesting model because it supports running in both in host and endpoint mode and it's from the so-called Alpine-rich generation so it supports DisplayPort 1.2, HDMI 2.0, USB 3.1, USB power delivery. Now in terms of analyzing how this particular controller works it's not really an attractive device to have a look at at least initially because it's the BGA package so all the pins are on the bottom and there are no public data sheets so yeah we had a look at the other chips first. The DPS is really the opposite situation there's a public data sheet and you can actually talk to this thing over ISQUARE-C for example to get some firmware identifiers and the current operational state and I think there are also some registers in there that allow you to control the output voltage so we know it's what you could do with that. The spy flash is really much the same there's public data sheet and well we dumped this content and we found that it stores the Thunderbolt 3 device controller firmware. When you dump this firmware you will immediately notice a section called the D-ROM or the device ROM and this device ROM stores all the parameters that we saw on the previous slide. Now of course the most important question is is the UUIE in there? And the answer is yes but only two out of eight bytes. Still we would like to know whether we can change any of these parameters so is there a cryptographic signature in there? Well the answer is yes there's a public key and a sign digest changing the public key doesn't really work so the fingerprint is likely being stored somewhere in silicon. Now our second question remains unanswered because we would like to know whether we can change any of these details without breaking the cryptographic signature. So what is covered by the signature? Well, not the D-ROM. Basically we found that we can create completely arbitrary device identities like the one shown right here made by the vendor totally legitimate which of course makes no sense. What's more interesting is that for example you would expect the vendor ID to be tied to the vendor name any other way around and during our research we found that this is actually not the case basically you can enter arbitrary values for any of these entries. All right so I want to look at the Intel white paper on Thunderbolt 3 security and there was this interesting section on the unique ID and it said and I'm reading off the screen here every Thunderbolt 3 controller has a unique ID fused in silicon during production. Now you already know the statement is not true because we can change two out of eight bytes but there was this interesting emphasis on Thunderbolt 3. Try to look at Thunderbolt 2 controller firmware. And well to answer your question, yes that's the UID. It's there in plain text and no it's not covered by any signatures. Now what's more interesting is that it turns out Thunderbolt 2 devices can spoof or clone Thunderbolt 3 device identities. So what does that mean when you can clone identities? Well remember in our example we had this Thunderbolt powered hard drive but this time the laptop is set to sleep or is screen locked. Well in this case this is not really an issue because the Thunderbolt powered hard drive was already authorized by the user so when connecting it will start working immediately without prompting the user. Now a new attacker comes in and tries to connect their device. Well of course the attacker device will have a completely different identity and so the system will deny Thunderbolt connectivity. Also the laptop is locked or set to sleep so the attacker won't be able to authorize their device. Now this is in theory how this protection scheme should work but during our research we found that we can actually clone identities from one device to the other. So all the attacker would have to do is get a hold of one of the user's pre-authorized Thunderbolt devices, clone its identity and then finally gain access to the laptop even if it's set to sleep or screen locked. Right so let's dive a little bit deeper into the device controller firmware. We have a jump address on top but what's more interesting is there's a secure key dictionary so when the user is using asl2 this section stores the secret keys that maps to the host controller UUID and it's there in plain text. Now there's the DRUM section which we've discussed earlier and the PHY configuration. There's the public key and the sign digest and what turns out to be the USB power delivery firmware. So this is really interesting because that means that the Thunderbolt host controller and the USB PD controller share the same spy flash. And finally there is a what I like to call scratch pad section that temporarily stores firmware updates for firmware updates initiated from the host. Right so let's have a look at some Thunderbolt Equip systems. We have a look at Thunderbolt Equip systems from all major vendors across five generations of Thunderbolt controllers starting from Falcon Reach on Thunderbolt 2 all the way to Ice Lake on Thunderbolt 3. They were pretty much all the same but this Lenovo had a really nice and clean USB layout so that's why I'm showing it right here. If you've ever opened up a laptop most of these components will be familiar to you but of course the most interesting components are in the top right corner. Starting with the Thunderbolt host controller a dual port version in this case. The TPS slightly different version that we saw on the devices and the wind-borne spy flash which we'll be talking about in a bit. Now for the host controller the key questions are well first there is the option to change security levels in the BIOS and so this kind of seems to suggest that the BIOS stores the security level state. But if you want to know whether it's actually true. Now when the user selects either SO1 or SO2 this requires storing device UI IDs and so we would like to know where this device is stored. So we had a closer look at the host controller firmware and essentially it was very similar to the device firmware but there are a couple of important differences. First one being there's no security key dictionary and there is a list of allowed devices, UUIDs. So this is really interesting because when the user selects SO2 this means that at boot time the device authorization still happens based on the UUID only which kind of seems to contradict Intel's claim. Now there's the D-ROM, again the PHY configuration and all the remaining components that are the same. But there was another important difference. We found that it stores the host security level configuration and to answer your question, yes it's in plain text and no it's not covered by any signatures. So all the attacker would have to do is patch the host controller firmware to, for example, disable Thunderbolt security entirely or re-enable Thunderbolt connectivity when it was disabled by the user. Right, spy flashes, they're really interesting devices and usually support some kind of write protection mechanism. Now this particular wind bond we found in a lot of samples that we had access to and well this model supports five types of write protection and one is called one time program. Now one time program essentially turns the spy flash into a read only memory. So from that point on, the data that is stored on the spy flash can no longer be changed. Now in the footnote it says special order but we found during our research that a lot of samples that we had access to still appear to ship this kind of support. So as an attacker this opens up a new attack factor because basically what the attacker could do is exploit the previous vulnerability to disable Thunderbolt security entirely and next exploit this vulnerability to disable Thunderbolt security permanently so that the user could never reactivate Thunderbolt security ever again. Right, so to summarize basically there are two attack methods. So the first attack method requires brief access to the laptop to reprogram the host controller firmware and this only takes under five minutes. It does not require access to any of the user's Thunderbolt devices. Now the second attack method is kind of the inverse so it does not require access to the host controller firmware but only requires brief access to any of the victim's pre-authorized Thunderbolt devices. Now the impact is really the same for both so attacker could get unrestricted written rights access to system memory access data from encrypted drives and get persistent access by exploiting vulnerability six or installing a rootkit. All right, so let's have a look at how attack methods one can be used in practice. So what we have here is a Lenovo P1 which was purchased last year and as you can see it's in sleep mode. Yes, it's been locked so I don't know the password and the password isn't empty either as you can see. So that's all good. What we're gonna do now is turn over the laptop so that we can reach the backplate and we unscrew the backplate. Right, there we go. So now I'm going to attach my spy programmer which is a device called BusPirate and it allows me to interface with the spy flash that is storing the Thunderbolt controller firmware. So attaching the BusPirate to my attacker laptop and now we're going to use a tool called flash ROM to get the firmware from the spy flash. Right, so now I have a dump and I'm going to feed that dump to a tool that I wrote which is called Thunderbolt Controller Firmware Patcher. And so as you can see apparently the Thunderbolt controller was set to security level one which is the default security level on all Thunderbolt laptops and I'm patching it now to an insecure state. And so as you can see it says SL0 which means all Thunderbolt security is disabled. Now we're going to write back the firmware to the spy flash. Now this might take a bit because flash ROM will be trying various methods to program the spy flash and as you can see eventually it will succeed. Okay, so now we've written our custom firmware to the spy flash and we're detaching the spy programmer and putting back the backplate onto the laptop, turning over the laptop and opening it up. Now, as you can see it's still up and running. We still can get into the laptop and here I'm attaching my Thunderbolt based attack device. Now what you see here is a device that will be attacking the laptop and we're going to use that device with a DMA attack tool called PCI Leach developed by Ofrisk and here I'm loading a kernel module into the memory of the laptop which allows me to bypass Windows lock screen. We're entering no password and there we go. You can get into the laptop. Thank you for watching. Right, so let's have another look at Thunderbolt security levels. This is how it's defined and well, let's have a look at what we found it to mean. So starting with as a one, device authorization is based on the UUID. Well, this UUID is not really so unique because they can be spoofed and no, the UUID is not really fused in silicon. As a two stores secret keys on the spy flash. Sure, that could work, but they're in plain text so that can be cloned. For SL3, well, SL3 disables all Thunderbolt security. That could work, but the attacker could reprogram the host controller firmware to disable Thunderbolt security altogether. There's SL4, which was really puzzling to us because all the attack would need to do is unplug any existing devices or just pick another Thunderbolt port. And finally, pre-boot protection. Well, pre-boot protection has no effect because all of these security levels are essentially broken. All right, so if you're feeling adventurous, you can try any of these tools that you saw in the demo yourself. I've published them on my GitHub repo. The first one is the Thunderbolt controller firmware patcher and the second one is called spy block, which lets you configure all flash drive protection. Quickly moving on to effective systems. So all Thunderbolt equipped systems shipped between 2011 and today are vulnerable and this especially applies to all PCs released between 2011 and 2018 because they are fully vulnerable. All Macs running Windows and Linux using Bootcamp are fully vulnerable as well. Now some systems providing kernel DMA protection, which we'll be talking about in a bit, are partially vulnerable. And if you're using macOS, please keep doing so because systems running macOS are also partially vulnerable. So if you would like to check whether your system is vulnerable, have a look at our tool spy check or follow the manual authentication steps on our website. All right, so Intel's response to ThunderSpy was what you could say quite underwhelming and essentially what they suggested is kernel DMA protection. Now kernel DMA protection is an opt-in DMA remapping mechanism for vulnerable devices. And according to Intel, all you need is a recent version of Windows 10 or a recent version of the Linux kernel. So let's have a look at how that works. Well, normally when a device does DMA to the host, it does so directly to the IO additional region in kernel space. With kernel DMA protection, there's an IO MMU in between. And so the PCI Express endpoints, including those in Thunderbolt, would not be able to read or write outside the memory range that is signed by the IO MMU. So all in all, it sounds like a sound strategy, but what Intel didn't tell you is that this is a partial mitigation only. Specifically, it only mitigates vulnerabilities 4.2.6. And yes, it prevents attacks via DMA, but it does not prevent vulnerabilities 1.2.3 from being exploited, which leaves the system open to, well, what is called back USB style of attacks. Also, kernel DMA protection requires IO MMU and BIOS support. And this BIOS support during our research we found is only available on some systems released since 2019. So all the previous systems, starting from 2011 to 2019, do not support this kind of protection. So no fix from Intel. So essentially what they're saying is, if you bought a laptop in the past nine years, just buy a new one. Well, obviously it wasn't the answer that we had hoped for. So we had a look at the question, what is actually needed for the system to support kernel DMA protection? And it turns out it's this list of components. So let's briefly go through them. First, there's the IO MMU. Well, it turns out that most systems since Haswell ship with an IO MMU. The DMAR table, well, if the CPU provides an IO MMU, the firmware also ships a DMAR table. We need a system capable of running either of these recent OS versions. Well, obviously this is the case for all Haswell systems and newer. And then there's this UEFI support, which apparently is not present. So we had a look at what this UEFI support actually means. And it turns out that we had to take a look at the DMAR table. And in the DMAR table, there is a flag which denotes which DMA remapping features have been enabled. Now for kernel DMA protection to work, all we needed to do is search two bits, one for enabling interrupt remapping, and the other is called DMA control platform opt-in. And then finally chain loads the OS bootloader. So that's what we did with Thunder Spy 2, which is not an attack, but two methods that bring kernel DMA protection to roughly six years worth systems. The first method is called kernel DMA protection patcher. You can find it on my GitHub repo. Essentially what it does is, well, patching the ACPI table using a UEFI module is OS agnostic, so it works with both recent versions of Windows 10 and Linux. The second method, if you're using Linux, basically comprises mentally patching the DMAR table, and you can find the steps to do so in the guide that I linked right here. Now in terms of protection, the protection level is similar to officially supported systems at OS runtime. It does not protect against boot time attacks, but the good news is that screen locking and sleep modes are covered again. Linux users will soon have another option as we're working with the Linux kernel hardware security team to develop kernel level mitigations. Meanwhile, Linux users can still use KDMA P patcher. If you do so, we would recommend to sign the UEFI extension using your own keys and for additional security, firmly combine it with measured boot using, for example, TBM-enabled grub or heads. Right, so let's have a look at how kernel unit protection patcher works in practice. This is a Dell XPS 15 purchased in 2018. Now, when we look at MS-info 32, we see that it is running Windows 10 20 H2. And since it's a 2018 model, we see this laptop does not support grilled DMA protection as expected. So I've pre-compiled KDMA P patcher and we'll now copy it from a USB flash drive. There you go, that's the UEFI image. Opening up a command prompt. And now we're going to mount the UEFI system petition to the drive letter T, navigating to the Microsoft boot folder and we're copying the KDMA P patcher image. Finally, we ensure that the KDMA P patcher gets loaded first by renaming the Windows bootloader and renaming KDMA P patcher to the original Windows bootloader file name. Right, so all done. We're now going to reboot the laptop. Okay, so now in the top left corner, we see KDMA P patcher at work. It has enabled both the interrupt mapping and DMA control platform maps in flags. We quickly log into Windows and we have another look at MS Info32. And indeed it says kernel DMA protection has been enabled successfully. Right, so let's just attach a Thunderbolt 3 SSD like this one. There we go, it connected. So just for fun, we will now copy over some large files to the SSD. Now as you can see, there is no performance accreditation. And we're now going to safely unmount the SSD. Oh, that was a bit too early. Trying again. Yeah, all good. Okay, so we're now going to lock the screen. And now we're going to attach our Thunderbolt ATACO device from demo one. And next we're going to attempt to perform our DMA attack against the laptop. Now Windows has detected what it calls a drive for DMA violation. And so that means it caught us reading outside the memory range assigned by the IO memory. So kernel DMA protection is working as intended. Right, so UE5 support, what does it mean? Well, essentially it means sending a flag in Zmar table. And that's what we're doing with Thunder Spy 2. So we're all done. Right, so what's next for the future of Thunderbolt-based interconnects? Well, basically two issues remain unaddressed. So regarding Thunder Spy, there's Thunderbolt is 1, 2, 3. There is actually no means for the user to distinguish between forged and legitimate D-ROMs. So the files could be looking okay physically, but internally could still have been tampered with. And then there's kernel DMA protection, which Intel proposes as a replacement of security levels. Well, kernel DMA protection does protect against DMA attacks, but it does not protect against any other PCIe inherent attack factors, such as spoofing arbitrary PCIe IDs to target vulnerable device drivers, or spoof TOP source IDs to hijack transactions. And so both of these issues, they will most likely affect USB 4 and Thunderbolt 4. And actually for Thunderbolt 4, we know that Intel now requires vendors to implement kernel DMA protection as part of their vendor product certification scheme. So the good news is that if you buy a Thunderbolt 4 laptop, you will be guaranteed to have kernel DMA protection. But unfortunately, backwards compatibility likely means that both of the issues that we mentioned here still remain unaddressed. So potential avenues on mitigating these remaining issues, starting with the Thunder Spy vulnerabilities, essentially everything is in there in the firmware regarding the public key and assigned digest. So if Intel shares the digest scope, either the firmware or the device driver could verify the firmware authenticity. And there's kernel DMA protection. My proposal would be to allow all devices on boot for practical reasons, but at OS runtime initially disable all new DMA devices. So essentially no route them using the IO and unmute. And then require screen unlocking and explicit authorization from their user. And then finally only then assign an IO memory range. Now for kernel memory safety issues, one could use virtualization based security. And I think Microsoft is currently working on that with kernel data protection. And I could see the learners kernel doing the same soon. And finally, well, to prevent TLP source ID spoofing, one could implement the source ID verification similar to PCIe ACS. And finally, I don't know if anyone from Intel is watching, but if you are, please implement a UEFI toggle that controls PCIe signaling. And when you do so, please maintain the state in UEFI only. Right, so the takeaway that I would like to give you tonight is Thunder Spy is a new class of vulnerabilities really breaking Thunderbolt security. There is no fix from Intel. So, yeah, check if your system is funneled using either spy check or by verify manually. There's the full vulnerability report published on our website in case you're interested in more details. We've presented Thunder Spy 2, which really shows that kernel EMA protection can be patched onto previous systems that are technically capable but have not received any firmware updates. And well, finally, the future is PCI Express, whether we like it or not. That means, well, this would enable some very nice news cases. But on the other hand, there are also several issues that currently remain unaddressed. So when new hardware arrives with USB 4 and Thunderbolt 4, I hope the issues that we mentioned here will have been addressed. So that's it for today. If you have any questions, you can reach me on Twitter or just ask me here in the Q&A. Thank you very much for joining. Well, Björn, thank you for your very interesting talk on that. I had a quick look in the IOC in between and I saw that many took great interest into your talk. And your talk was quite comprehensive, so we only have got two questions left, actually. And the first one is, is it possible to manipulate the host controller firmware from the operating system or did you have to open it up and read flash directly? Yes, it is possible to manipulate the firmware from the host. This is actually what the Thunderbolt device and host controller vendors do when they update the controller firmware. There is a caveat. You cannot write to every offset in the firmware right from the host. So in particular, the security level configuration is not reachable from the host, but there is a backdoor via the TPS, the USB power delivery controller. So in theory, yes, this attack could be done from the host, but of course you would need to have root access or administrator share windows. So that's a different threat model than physical attacks, but yes, it is possible. Okay, thank you for that. Then we've got another question. Is the memory access completely unrestricted or only in certain regions regarding Thunderbolt One? Regarding Thunderbolt One, yes, completely unrestricted. At the time, kernel DMA protection didn't exist. This was only introduced with Thunderbolt, some Thunderbolt three systems starting from 2019. So not even all of them, but just a number. And all the systems before 2019 are guaranteed not to have kernel DMA protection. So that means that if you're either using Thunderbolt One or Thunderbolt two or three with security levels, you're vulnerable to Thunder Spy. Okay, thank you for taking the time and preparing this talk. Thank you for coming virtually over here. Also, lots of thanks from the IOC. I'm told the reaction is broadly positive. And I would like to wish you very much fun on the remaining RC three and hope to hear from you again. Your talk was great. Thank you. Thank you for joining me.


around here out of San Antonio, Texas. I am a realtor of a little over 14 years and a host of Realty Success Hub and podcast. A couple of quick things about me. I have a huge passion for water sports and anything adventurous love helping families in a real estate. We've got some phenomenal people here today on our show, who I would love to introduce you to Angela. Maybe you could start and tell us a little bit about yourself and something fun about you that maybe no one knows. Oh, well, thank you so much, Aaron. I'm super excited to be here on the show today. And thank you guys for joining us. I am Angela Brown. I have been in the cleaning industry for 32 years. I'm the host of the Ask a House Cleaner podcast and YouTube show. And we are exploring a whole bunch of ideas today on this show about spring cleaning and some of the things that we're going to do to get our homes ready. We had a special guest that was going to join us today and then at the last minute couldn't make it. So we're going to talk about spring cleaning, which I know is on everyone's mind.  We may move.  So I'm super excited to join you today. And back to you, Aaron. Thank you so much, Angela, for that introduction. Brooke Bryant, we have from Charlotte. Brooke, could you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about you? Absolutely. I'm so excited to be here with you guys. My name is Brooke Bryant. I'm a realtor in the Charlotte area. I've been in real estate for about 12 years now. And I have a passion for working with first time home buyers. As a matter of fact, I'm working on a book to help first time home buyers through that process. And so I'm really excited to talk with you guys about spring cleaning, some great tips that I can pass along to my clients and just get people invested in their homes and rolling up their sleeves and enjoying the spring and their homes. And so I'm excited to see what we learned today. Fantastic. Thank you so much, Brooke. And I've got Regina Braille here. And Regina, maybe you could introduce yourself. Tell us a little bit about you as well. Indeed. So again, as he says, I'm Regina Brown from San Antonio, Texas. I've been a realtor here in San Antonio for the past seven years. I absolutely love what I do. We help people buy and sell all of the time. A couple of fun things about myself. I love live music. I love adventuring outdoors, dancing. So anytime people want to get out and do anything fun, I'm I'm the girl no matter no matter what we're doing. Workwise, we're having fun at the same time.  And also I want to give Big B a shout out.  So Big B, here's your shout out. We're so glad to see you. Big B. But we're going to jump right into this again. Anybody who has questions, please jump in. Feel free to ask. We have a live chat going and we'll try to get to those questions as we can. We're going to jump in today and talk about some of the things that you can do to prep your house to get it ready for spring. A lot of those things have to do with cleaning. And it's also why we have the cleaning expert on today. So we'll jump right into it. We've got a couple of questions that have been asked from clients. And we'll jump right into that. Actually, Angela, I know that there was a couple of questions that some people had asked. Do you want to start with that? I do. Chris says, what do you do when there's too much cleaning equipment and cleaners to carry from the car? And I love this question because if you have not consolidated your cleaning supplies, if you are a professional cleaner and you're going in and out of people's homes, the rule of thumb is whatever you can carry in your two hands. The two hands that God gave you, that's what you carry your stuff in with. If you're making six and seven trips into the customer's house, that's a lot of stuff to carry in and it's a lot of stuff to carry out. And just think that if it's a two story home, you're carrying all that stuff up and down the stairs and it's going to be scattered all over the house. So consolidate your cleaning supplies. I think there is a tendency to go up and down the grocery store aisles and you see all the cleaning supplies and you get really excited about it. And like, oh, we need one of all those things. You really don't. If you'll carry a consolidated container and I use a bucket, which is a mop bucket back from the olden days when we used mop buckets. And I put all of my cloths in there so that I've got my cleaning cloths and my steamer. And then in the other hand, I have my cleaning caddy that has all of my cleaning supplies. So I've got my supplies and I have my cloths, OK? And then I do not use my own vacuum. I use the customer's vacuum, especially since COVID. I know lots of people are very concerned about cross-contamination and if you're using a vacuum and you're running it all over the floors of someone's home and they've got five dogs and then you take that vacuum into someone else's home and they don't have any dogs or pets at all. You know, you're cross-contaminating with the dog hair that's in the pet dander that's on the bottom of your vacuum. In most cases, there is not enough time to sanitize the entire vacuum from top to bottom between houses. So when we pick up a new account, we encourage them to buy a vacuum if they don't have a good vacuum. And then we use the customer's vacuum. We've trained all the people on our staff to do a 360 walk around of the vacuum when they're done. They check the vacuum to make sure that all the attachments and the airtight seals are in place, that the problems on the vacuum are still in place and that they haven't been bent by ripping them out, you know, across the room. I know you guys don't do that, do you? You take it out at the plug. That's how you're supposed to do it. Of course. We empty the customer's vacuum and then we wipe it down with a wet wipe to sanitize that. And we leave it at the customer's house.  So consolidate it and narrow it down. What do you need for this job? And it's the reason that we do inventory at the end of every day.  When you get to the next house, you have only what you need for that job. I've got two sets of cleaning caddies for two houses during the day. And when I get back to my car after one job, I put that cleaning caddy in the car and I grabbed the next one for the next customer. That way there's no cross contamination. What was in this customer's house did not go to the next customer's house.  So there's no there's no cross contamination because you consolidate it and you plan to hit it. And so my suggestion would be really think through your process if you're carting in three and four trips worth of things. Could you also give us a quick suggestion on what type of vacuum or one of those hundred and fifty dollar vacuums for Walmart? OK, or do we need like an expensive crazy one? There are some really, really great vacuums on the market and they range in price from sixty five dollars to five hundred dollars. And there might be more expensive and there might be less expensive. But that's the general range. And I say the general range because they're really good vacuums and it's going to come down to the homeowner. And as a professional house cleaner, we're flexible enough. We use lots of vacuums and I know this is going to surprise you guys. Like, don't tell anyone. But I can vacuum a floor with pretty much any vacuum. And so it gives me a vacuum. I'm hard to know what to do with them. I know that's what, you know, that's how it works. But if the customer has a really good vacuum that does do suction and it's going to pick the stuff up off their carpets and their hardwood floors, that's great. We can make it work. And we're only going to use it for a couple of hours while we're at the customer's house. So if I totally hate your vacuum, that's OK, as long as it works. Then when I go to the next customer's house, they might have a better vacuum and lots of people have old vacuums like old Kirby or something. That's really heavy and it hardly picks up anymore. You might you might consider investing in a new vacuum, right?  And then you get to use it between the times that they come. So I encourage you, if you have an old vacuum that you've had for 40 years, retire it, let it go and get something modern. It can cost, like I said, 100 bucks and cost 200 bucks as the homeowner you get to decide. So pick a vacuum that you love and my suggestion is pick one that has a good hose on it so that you can use the Prevus tool around between the sofas of the couch underneath the couch around a little hard to get areas around the area where the wall meets the carpet. You can get in all those nooks and crannies.  The little area between your refrigerator and the wall, you can slide it back there. You know, it's it's really great. So make sure it has a hose and then a lot of homes have either luxury vinyl plank flooring or hardwood flooring. And so if there is a vacuum attachment, it's usually a lightweight vacuum attachment with a flat floor plate. It doesn't have a rough beater bar that's going to knock up your floor. But that's really great for hardwood and solid surface floors. And then you can get like underneath the sofas and underneath the chairs. It's amazing what you can do with these modern vacuums. Love it so much. Maybe you could provide a link for us for your favorite for any of us that are shopping for our next vacuum. I did not know you were going to ask me of this. So, yes, I'm going to make notes as we go. And then that way I will put links in the replay after we're done here. I'll add links for the vacuums. Fantastic. OK. Hey, when it comes to airfield terms, I know that a lot of people skip on this. They don't replace them often, more often than not. When I'm walking through homes, the air filters are black and most people don't even know where most of their air filters are. Does anybody have any suggestions on how we can encourage people on spring cleaning to get those filters replaced, where they can find good filters and where they can find them in their house? They don't know where they're at. Well, most filters you can find, you know, you can order online and everything can come to you. There are even companies that will set you up on a schedule and come to your home and change your filters. So you don't have to inventory them at your home. You don't have to locate them. You don't have to remember to do it. And it's just done for you. And it is so important to change your filters. Not only is it great for the health of your HVAC system, but right now in the spring, I'm in Charlotte, North Carolina. The pollen here is crazy. I don't know if it's if you guys have crazy pollen in Texas, everything is yellow. My car used to be white, not anymore. And those changing your filters, that's going to help reduce the allergens in your home. And so many people here are suffering with really severe allergies this spring. And that is, you know, and you can get upgraded filters for your home to help reduce some of the allergens that get in there. So tips on how to do it. Just locate, find the size. Keep it, keep it in your phone. Keep it somewhere where you can keep it on a keep file, where you know the size or just set it up on automatic delivery. If you have, if you do some online shopping, set them up to be delivered automatically. That way you don't have to remember the size. And it's just one of those things that you need to do seasonally, just to help preserve the life of your HVAC system. It's so important for that. And it's going to help reduce the allergens in your home. How often if you have pets and or smoke, should you be replacing filters? Angela, that's probably a great you question. Yeah, that is a great question. And typically it depends on the MIRV rating. And the MIRV rating depends on it goes on a scale of one to 13. Typically, that's going to be your average. It does go as high as 17, but that's going to be for like hospital rooms. And so if you have one that's really almost transparent and see through like those skinny builders, ones that come when you first get a house, those are like at the very low end of the scale and they're not going to pick up much stuff. The more dense they are, and you'll usually see there's like a little accordion pattern and it's covered with metal and that holds all the stuff in. And what that means is it's going to trap a lot of stuff in there, okay? So the average MIRV rating for an air filter is going to be between nine and 12. And that's really great. That's going to last you two or three months. But if you have a lot of pets or you have a lot of dust like if you live in Las Vegas, for example, or Utah where they've got those big sand storms that come through, you open the door and there's a lot of dust that blows in, you may want to change it even as often as every month and a half. Now I know that Brooke mentioned that there are a lot of companies that do this for you where they will put it on a tickler file and they will come back and do that. I know that as a professional house cleaner we have an upsell package where it's little home maintenance things like changing the toilet flapper and the batteries for your carbon monoxide filters and your air filters and things like that. You have a house cleaner that's inside the house on a regular basis every couple of weeks. So they can do that as well and they can also take measurements and then just make that part of the order. Then when they come to clean the house on that particular time, they're going to replace that stuff that's just part of the standard operating procedure. And where you have a lot of let's say elder people that either are not good at remembering or they just don't want to fuss with it, that's a great upsell package where you have a house cleaner that just brings that with them that and now I'm going to go back to where you got to make extra trips in from your car unless you have them drop shipped to that customer's house. And lots of people will buy their own filters or have them drop shipped and you just install them when you're there. So it just depends on how you do that but you just make a note and then depending on the lifestyle of the family and if you're cleaning every week or a couple of weeks and you're at a customer's house and you see that they're starting to get icky that's you might have to up it and just say, hey, your filters are already black again let's go ahead and replace those. So depending on the lifestyle of the family you may want to change it a little bit more frequently but that way we'll prevent every time the air blows in and out you're not going to get anything that goes on either side of that it's just going to trap and lock it. So that's the goal. And I'll add to that Aaron you guys I'm sure do a lot of work in new construction areas there's so much dust in new construction so that first year they're in the home they're probably going to need to change their filters more often then as construction is completed. So Kaylee says I generally change the air filters at least twice a year but ideally every three months every seasonal change and that would be for a person that doesn't have any pets and so that's if you've got a really high amount of rating and you've got a great air filter you may be able to go that long. I think typically it's every couple of months and then more frequently if you have pets or you have dust or severe like right now pollen we're telling all of our customers close the windows because the pollen if the pollen gets inside it's just like this yellow gold film that gets on your computer keyboards and your computer screens and your remote controls and it's just like sticky and icky. Don't do it. All of you guys close your windows. It's such a shame the weather's so nice you want to keep your windows open but you got to keep that pollen out. I know that air filters help a lot in keeping down the dust like in my house for example it still gets really dusty either way. How do I cut down on some of that dust and what do I do so that the house looks and feels clean when I have people over? It seems like there's a film of dust on everything all the time anyway. Is that a question for me? Not for me. Dust is ever, ever surrounding us. It really depends on your lifestyle if you keep the windows and the doors open it's easy to have stuff blow in.  But if you have just a constant thing of dust you do want to keep the air filters changed. You might consider the carpet and the fabrics in your home. If you're wall to wall carpets and fabrics it's going to trap a lot of that stuff. When the air kicks on it's possible it kicks that up. If you have a lot of foot traffic it's going to kick that up which is where our baseboards or our skirting boards get dusty. And so if there's a lot of traffic I know my home gets a lot of traffic I've got employees that come to the house every day and so there's a lot of traffic coming and going and the doors opening and closing and we get a lot of dust. It just has to be clean on a regular basis but some areas have more dust than others. So when you try to stay on top of it and try to keep the windows and doors closed and replace the air filters and make sure you've got a good vacuum that doesn't blow dust back out the other side. Somebody on here said, don't buy a vacuum under $100. I did not miss that comment. And I say that they come in all prices but under the $100 vacuum is probably one of those kicks that dust back to the other side. Vacuums it in this way kicks it out the back. The interesting thing for them is use a wet cloth to capture some of that dust on shelving, et cetera. You can use a microfiber cloth because that's really great with the, it traps the dust. I'm a really big fan of the Swiffer dusters because they have trap and lock technology and that's patented by Swiffer. And with Swiffer it is a disposable head that goes on the duster. I usually have one in my back pocket and I don't at this moment I'm feeling really naked now that you mentioned it. But it's really great for just regular maintenance. And so homeowners and professionals use them alike and it traps all the dust.  And another thing Aaron to help with dust if you keep your ceiling fans clean I'm sure you go into some homes and you look at those ceiling fans and it's scary, right? Some of the ceiling fans we see all the dust build up on those and those are spinning all that dust around. So I think that would be another good way to... I wonder if I could attach a Swiffer duster to the fan blades. Just catch it in the air as it spins. So it catches the dust. That's the next invention. Maybe someone will get me and they will let me test that out. Well, we were out the other day. I know Regina ran into this issue where there was... The closets were basically pouring out into the bedrooms. How could we encourage people or talk to people about kind of closet maintenance? Organization decluttering, anything closet related. Helping people prep and sell for their homes. Closet organization is something we've run into or a lack thereof. It's something we run into very, very regularly. There's some good tips or tricks. Well, and what Regina ran into the other day is she opened the master closet and it was basically piles that were from the master closet out into the bedroom onto the bed. And so... Well, spring is such a great time to deal with that, right? The spring cleaning and to thin those things out. So I'm sure, Angela, you've got some great organizational tips, but yes, springtime and getting your home ready to sell.  From a realtor perspective, I just tell people like that, like, hey, you gotta get rid of all of that. And they look at me like I'm crazy. Maybe you guys can have some better suggestions. Well, it's a little bit different with cleaning than it is with the realty industry because when a realtor comes to a house, it's usually because there's a buy or a sell transaction happening. And so if that's the case, there's more of an incentive to clean than somebody that just needs to tidy up. I'm not offended, but I'm very aware that a lot of the people that I get to work with are not going to have, when we're finished with their home, they're not going to have what we call a Pinterest looking closet. And if I could share an image with you, many people will strive for perfectionism. And so this is, you know, everything is color coded and everything is in a special box and everything looks really pretty and everything is manageable. And this does not look like my house or most of the people that I get to work with, our homes do not look like this. Our homes are really practical. And if I have a choice of fighting for practicality over perfectionism, I think that's really a key. What we're looking at here is we're looking at a practical closet. And I love this practical closet because what this does is this takes space, there weren't enough shelves in here. So this is a free standing shelf that was bought at Home Depot or Costco or something. And on it are clear stackable bins. And the clear stackable bins are not Pinterest worthy. This is not glamorous. Nobody's going to win any awards for this closet.  So I think that's effective and that removes some of the dust that we were talking about earlier. And then also you take the laundry basket and in one bin you put all the underwear and the next one you put all the socks and the next one you put whatever it is and you just go room by room to each person's closet in the house until the laundry bin is empty. And so the laundry never made a pile anywhere because you went right from the laundry basket into the individual little bins. And so with the bin of socks, they're not matched. They're not folded pretty. They're not rolled up. They're not in a little special box. They're not in a drawer. They're not anything. They're just right down the shelf. So when you look at this, what you're looking at is inventory. So when the socks start to get near the bottom, you're like, oh, I got a new laundry. Like I can see my socks are running out. Oh, look, I see the underwear is running out. I mean, it's a visual right up front of what's going on. And then you can see the clothes that you have right there and the shoes that you have right there and everything has a place. So if you talk about clothes and stuff that are, and I didn't mean to hob the screen here, but we do the same thing inside people's kitchens when it comes to pantries. So here's a pantry. This is not a glamorous pantry at all. But if you look back there to the back and the shelf two and three in the far right, not the far right corner, but right there in the center, what you're looking at is a bunch of stackable, like a Tupperware container. And in those boxes that are there on the bottom shelf to the left are all of the lids. And so this is not, again, it's not Pinterest. It's not beautiful. Nobody's gonna win any awards for this. On the right shelf, you see a bunch of recycled containers that at one point had fun treats in them. And now they have things like rice and beans and noodles and not so glamorous, but it's airtight and it keeps rodents and mice away. So our goal is not to be so much, does it look glamorous and is it pretty as much as it is a functional and is it practical? And so our goal, I mean, I'll be honest with you. Nobody's ever come to my house before, knocked on my door and said, hey, I'd like to come in and check out your closets. So I see how they look. Nobody's ever done that. You haven't had me over recently. You're gonna inspect this. Nobody's inspecting my closets and nobody's giving me any awards for one way or the other, right? And that's true for most families. So unless you have a reason to post your closets and pantries and stuff on Pinterest, practical, and try to have something functional that everyone in the family can use, like if you have, let's say a room for the boys in your house or the room for the girls, if they're all sharing clothes with each other, is it functional and can they all find this stuff that they need? And if the answer is yes, then yay. My mom had a great suggestion because there were lots of us kids at home wearing the same clothes at the same time.  And then anybody that needed a pair of socks for the day went in and they were all the same size. Just pick out a pair of socks and you can pick out two of them. Yeah, I got two feet, there you go.  And then whoever needed a shirt for the day they would go up and they would pick a shirt and they'd go, hey, that's about my size. I think I'll wear it, you know? So functional is the key and it's gonna prevent the need for guilt and shame of people that don't have a Pinterest-looking pantry and they're shamed by stuff they see on social media. When we're talking about screen cleaning and organizing and decluttering, go for practicality.   Can I rant for a second, you guys? Please bring it on. I have seen shows on TV and stuff where they hire really expensive organizers and professional cleaners that come into the home and they color coordinate everything. All the blue stuff here, all the yellow stuff here. I'm like, what the heck? Because all the yellow stuff is there and yes, it's pretty, but you got a whole bunch of mismatched stuff, pants, shirts, handbags, whatever, and it's all yellow. Now you got a whole bunch of stuff in weird odd places. And now you got all the blue stuff that's all in weird places, but it's all blue. Okay, well the reality is most people don't shop by color. They shop by items. I need a shirt for the day, I need a pair of pants. You know what I mean? And so yes, it's true, you can go through all of those things, but sooner or later, all that stuff gets unraveled and it never makes its way back to looking pretty and organized. And those drawers, if I can go back to that one scene where the drawer has the, I don't know what this is, like everything is all pretty and folded nicely and everything, that's gonna work for a minute. I mean, for a minute like until the professional organizer leaves the house.  I think that's such great advice from a cleaning perspective and from just a homeowner's perspective. And I think things like spring cleaning, fall cleaning, they're so important for people just not to get overwhelmed. So if it's something that's practical and manageable that's gonna help you enjoy your home more, I think that's so important rather than to strive for something that's just so far out of reach. But just keeping things in a manageable way, like every spring, if I do these three things, then I'm not getting to a point where I feel like I have to do everything. If you're spreading these tasks out over the year or if you're taking on projects and keeping them manageable and sustainable and real and practical, I think that's such great advice. I love the idea of the plastic see-through containers. Yeah. They're a really easy way to organize things. And I never thought of putting all of your lids in a box. That is brilliant. I just thought you put them in a cupboard and tried to close the door without them falling out. And then whenever you needed them, you opened the cupboard and caught the lids. And so it's kind of- That was really awesome stuff on TikTok. I'll be able to- I've seen some awesome stuff on TikTok where people have like their four lids and they're all like neatly stacked in this little lid thing. And I'm like, four lids. Who has four lids? You know what I mean? You have 400 and they just, yeah. Yeah. And none of them fit anything. No, that's the other thing. None of them fits anything. That's why they always fall out into your arms. And then you try to figure out which one goes with what. So I love the box. Okay, I'll put it in a baggie. I know that in my house, speaking of lids, and this is a sidebar, but in my house we use a lot of the little four ounce containers and the eight ounce containers for our breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And so we have a drawer only for the four ounce and the eight ounce lids. That's it. And they're mixed match. They're not separated like the four ounce and the eight ounce and we were not that, you know, but they're all just in the same drawer. And so that is separate from everything else that we have. And so it's never, are there any other lids of any other sizes? Only the little lids are inside that drawer. So whenever we wash them and they go through the dishwasher or we rinse, you know, wash them up by hand or whatever, all the lids always go back in the same place. And that way everybody in the house knows where to look for those lids if we need them. And so it removes all the guesswork and we're not sorting through other lids that we use on a whole lot less seldom basis.  But if it's effective for you and then everyone in the house knows where that particular item is kept, then it becomes habitual that everybody puts it back where it goes. Now, my mother, love my mother, but when she comes to visit my house, she puts them back where she thinks they go. And I can never find them. And I got to call her and six months later, she'll go, oh, if you go to the third cupboard over to the right and she knows exactly where she put it. But in her mind, that's where she was gonna put it. It makes no sense to me because that's not where we keep the stuff. If everybody in the house knows, then you're good. Hey, speaking of food containers, as far as spring cleaning, let's talk about appliances for just a minute. It seems like people only think about cleaning their appliances for the most part when things light on fire, like food, for example. Can we talk about that for just a minute and how to keep that kind of maintenance throughout the year? How often should you clean a stove? And is that just a job for a house cleaner or can the average person clean the stove without lighting the house on fire? Are you talking about the stove or the oven? That's the much I know about it. All right, so the stove, and this is really awesome. Many people have these stoves, like full-fashioned stoves that have the burners on them. And most people don't know this, but if you lift up the lid, you're like, no, my stove doesn't have a lid. It does. It actually has a lid and you can lift that up and underneath there are all the crumbs and everything. And that's what's causing the fires in a lot of cases. And a lot of the burners have little burner covers and some people will actually put like aluminum foil around there to kind of couch those, catch anything that falls. But there are some silicone versions of that that are real easy that are dishwasher safe. And so that will prevent anything that has dropped down there. It's gonna catch those. You empty those in the trash and then wash the liners out in the dishwasher. That way there's no food that can catch on fire. I would recommend at least four times a year that we open up the lid of that. And there's like a, you know when you open up the hood of the car and there's like this little stick that you put down in the car that holds the door up, the stove has the same thing. And so it will hold your stove up and you can actually grab a vacuum and vacuum out all the crumbs and all the dropped cheese and all that stuff that's fallen in, the stove that causes the fires. You can clean all of that out. That's typically done on the deep clean. And we do deep cleans four times a year in the professional cleaning industry. So I would recommend this to me. Just about that house lid. You what? I said, this is any stove that has a lid or some stoves or? The stoves that have the burners. The stoves that have the burners in them. Now if it's a flat cooktop, well, there's nothing to drop, okay? It just, it already dropped.  But they have those liners for ovens too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is great. I love those oven liners because it makes it so much easier to clean spills that happen in your oven or crumbs that fall down. You just get it, put it in the trap, dump it out, put it in the dishwasher and it's reusable. Those are great. Bola says, wipe stove after each meal prep. And that's the correct answer. If you clean it as you go, you don't have cheese and treats and things that have dropped down there. And Patricia is laughing at us. She's like, ah, there's tears in the eyes. I think that's pretty awesome. Clean while you cook is the true home training rule. Things are easier to clean soon after use instead of waiting hours or days. Wipe things down regularly. And that's Kayleigh. And Kayleigh, you're absolutely right. Absolutely right. If you clean it as you go, you don't have any buildup. And like what Brooke said, those oven liners are made of fiberglass or Teflon. They have silicone ones as well. They go up to 500 degrees. Most people cook between 350 and 400. So if you'll put that right at the bottom of a clean oven, anytime you cook like a blueberry pie and the stuff oozes out onto the bottom and it sinks up the house, you just grab that. That's how we do it. Like this is, this is- Or a frozen pizza. Or a frozen pizza, yes. Then you just pull out the liner.  You can grab a microfiber cloth and wipe that thing off and put it right back inside the oven. If it's really nasty, put it on the top shelf of the dishwasher and you can run it on a cycle. Again, it goes up to 500 degrees heat. So it's dishwasher safe as well. And there are also silicone mats that you can put in your microwave. Erin, you may be more familiar with your microwave than a stove or oven, but you put it in your microwave and it catches all those spills. Throw that in the dishwasher and then you can also use it to help carry that hot container out of the microwave. So that's a great, makes it easier- Two for smart. Cleanup item two. One thing that Brooke didn't mention is those flexible silicone microwave liners that keep your plate from slipping can also be used as a lid on containers that don't have a lid. And that way it keeps from splashing all over the sides and the walls and the ceiling of your microwave. Great tip. Love that. As far as other appliances, when I talk to clients, often they'll say things like, I'll clean my fridge when the funk smell gets so bad that it smells like a dead kid. And what is the recommendation for how often like a fridge should be cleaned or maybe a dishwasher? Let's dishwashers clean themselves when you- I'll jump in, Angela, before you talk about the cleaning side of it.  So every Thursday I go through my refrigerator and throw out whatever leftovers that I swore we were gonna eat this week that we didn't. I'll do all that on a weekly basis. And I started that because my father-in-law who is 87 years old keeps things in his refrigerator until it smells like the dead kitten. And I saw him eating something that he should not have eaten. And so I started that practice with him like, no, no, no, that's old, that's expired. You can't eat that. You need to take your refrigerator out every week and get rid of those expired foods. So then I thought, oh, that's a good practice to get into. So let's just want a tip- This explains the weekly casserole growing up then. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I've noticed that there are stores that serve and sell items. And then like they also have like a freezer container version of the same thing. And I think, oh, the broccoli was like on its, they did not sell it all. So they chopped it up and they hurried and they froze it so that they could sell it in the frozen item as well. Still get their money's worth out of it. So yeah, that works as well. My father did a lot of composting through the years. It seemed like a lot of food scraps always went in the compost. So just for anybody who can do that, it'd be a good idea as well. Cynthia says, everybody please compost. She just cut your vibe. Oh, there you go. There you go. Well, so many people are doing the container gardens now or the raised bed gardens, so much more home gardening now. So that's a great to compost. So Ola says, seeing kitchen messes for 30 years of being a cleaning lady makes me not eat others food.  Because... No, I do think going back to what Kaylee said a minute ago about clean it as you go. If you're getting something out of the refrigerator, just do a quick inventory. Take a look and see what's there. And if you have something that you know is there that hasn't been eaten in a while, why are you leaving it there? If you're not going to eat it, go ahead and pull it out and process it and get rid of it or compost it or something. There's no need to let mold grow on food just because you didn't eat it. Like if it has mold on it now, you're not going to eat it later. If there's no need to get it there, get rid of it. Yeah. Yeah, good tip. As far as spring cleaning, I'm usually the person that's outside working on the outside stuff. Is there anything else that you guys might recommend to people on the interior of the home that they should look out for during spring cleaning, that they shouldn't miss things that they, general maintenance type things. Any of you would recommend? Oh, spring cleaning, and I'll take this one. Spring cleaning is a great word for deep cleaning. Because on a deep clean, which we do four times a year, we're going to go through a lot of areas of the home that don't get cleaned at other times of the year. And seasonally, like for example, where I live in Charlotte, North Carolina, the spiders will come in, I don't know how they get in, but they come in when it gets really, really hot outside and they're looking for a cooler place or when it gets really, really cold outside and they're looking for a warmer place to kind of regulate their temperatures.  And so we set up our deep cleanings for those times of the year because we don't do cobweb cleaning at every clean. It just doesn't happen nor is it needed. And so we put those deep cleanings at four times a year so that we cover all the different areas of the house kind of on a rotating basis. And so there are a lot of things that we do on a deep clean that is going to cover the high areas of the room and it's going to get rid of all of the cobwebs and dust that's on higher areas like the entrance ledge of the great big window at the front of your home. That may not get cleaned at every clean because it's just not necessary but it does need it more than twice a year or once a year when people do spring cleaning. You know what I mean? Yeah, and also with that spring cleaning being a deep clean, sometimes like when you're cleaning when you're doing a deep clean on your kitchen and you actually take everything off of your counter it's a good time to see if you need to work on the caulk. Is the caulking cracked? So it's a great time to do projects like that.  If there is a good chance for you to do the caulking same thing for the bathrooms and the showers while you're in there and you're doing like a big deep clean on your grout see if your showers or tubs need to be recalled. That's a great idea, yeah. Also as a realtor I'm in and out of homes all day every day and some things that I noticed that get overlooked a lot of the time are light switches, doors, door knobs. I mean we touch them all. I get to touch them all in every home and they're vastly overlooked. Key pads, they're vastly overlooked and very, very dirty by and large. What's kind of a safe way to clean those or a most sanitary way? Well, the six panel doors are easily overlooked and they can be dusted on a regular clean but it depends on your house. I know that my house has 26 six panel doors inside my house and so that's two sides of the door. So that's not gonna get cleaned every week but every couple of weeks or at least four times a year on a deep clean where you go around every one of those little panels, nooks and crannies, you get rid of all the dust and then all the stuff that builds up in the corner and I say in the corner because I live in North Carolina there's a lot of humidity in the air.  So that needs to be clean. And like you said, two feet above the doorknob and two feet below the doorknob when people are either kicking the door with their foot to close the door or they're like grabbing the side of the door to close it instead of using the doorknob, fingerprints especially if people have like food in their hands and they're going into the media room from the kitchen or something like that. Lots of doors, bathroom doors they have lots of fingerprints on that area that's two feet above and two feet below the door. So at all times we want to use either a degreaser or an all-purpose cleaner to get that area. I know Otoban has a really great disinfecting product that we use for sanitizing. It's great for doorknobs. It's great for light switches. It's great for all of those high-touch areas. Can you say that again? What's the name of it? Otoban. Otoban? Yeah, it's an amazing product. It's like the most underrated product ever. It's been on the market for about 30 years and they're lousy at marketing but they're fantastic at producing products. It's safe on wood, safe on paint. No, not straight out of the container. We actually buy it by the gallon and it has dilution ratios. And so as professional cleaning companies we dilute it as an all-purpose cleaner because no need to use it full strength. And so the labels will tell you exactly how to dilute it for the different types of cleaning that you do. And it's a really great product because one product, I'll make the earlier question about do you carry all your cleaning supplies and how many do you carry? If one product will do the majority of the work carry that one product with you. Don't be carrying a whole bunch of products if one product will do it. So that's a really great product for cleaning. And then when you are cleaning the doors and the high-touch areas don't forget the banisters like the handrails going up and down stairways. Don't forget the areas that are like the handle on your dishwasher and your oven and your microwave and all the different handles. Don't forget the backs of the chairs where people grab the chair and pull it out. They're cooking dinner, they got food on their hands. Don't forget underneath the countertop where kids sit there and they got the jelly fingers and they pull themselves closer to the table and you just got a peanut butter underneath the counter. Don't forget those areas either. If you are scared of cleaning supplies and I know some people have either chemical sensitivities or they're not sure, a safe bet in many occasions is a steamer, a handheld steamer, because a handheld steamer you can use on a lot of surfaces and you're using water only. But because of the temperatures it's gonna sanitize that to about 99.9% and it's gonna be nice and clean and that removes all of the icky sticky fingerprints that are not sanitary in your house. And speaking of doors, that's also a great time while you're cleaning your doors to check the weather stripping of your home under the doors to make sure that that's intact, see if it needs to be replaced. That's gonna help keep dust and dirt out of your home. And it's just a great insulator for your home too. We've got lots of fans of the Otoban product. So yay for you guys, thank you. I just love this. Wow. You're the only ones who hadn't heard of Otoban. Oh, I know. Yeah, it's a really fun product. We've got several different products in their lineup from bathroom cleaners to biostand removers that remove like pet urine smells and stains that would be like that you can even use on your clothes like as a house cleaner. I know we have like under-armed stains. We've got like the collar that goes right around the neck. You can use them to clean with at someone's house and use it also to clean your uniforms. I mean, multi-cross platform products. So yeah, I'm a big fan. We have MoSim says carpet bugs. How do you prevent carpet bugs? Is there a realtor that wants to touch on this? I think that sounds like a cleaning question. So the thing that we would do for carpet bugs and hopefully we don't have bugs when we go to people's houses, sometimes we do and depending on the severity of that it might determine whether or not we're able to take care of that ourselves or whether we have to have a pest control company come in. One of the bugs that we see sometimes are bed bugs and bed bugs will get inside anything that's cloth. I mean, they love fabric and they'll come home in the pants of the house cleaner. If they get on your cleaning cloths they can come home with your cleaning cloths. If you find bed bugs, for example you need to stop what you're doing. Alert the family like, hey, you guys have bed bugs and so do I. Both of you guys need to meet with the pest control service and get rid of that because they're everywhere. And then you spread them and share them everywhere you go. So make sure that you don't carry those home.  Many areas are real popular for bugs. I know that in North Carolina, we have June bugs and we have Japanese beetles. And if you have flowering trees, especially in the spring, you open the door and you get lots of Japanese beetles that will just like fly in your house. You're like, whoa, how do I get rid of that? Ladybugs are real big. And so they get inside the house, they live on the ceiling and there's really no good way to get them out. The ladybugs are not harmful, but they seem to multiply. You know, one year my mother and dad came to visit they live out on a farm. And so they had the door open for fresh air coming in. We got this huge ladybug infestation in our home. And I was like, where did those come from? And it was just, they were the nice, great air, you know. So- I've had a couple of issues with fruit flies in the summer months. I don't know if you guys have fruit flies in Texas, but we get them so much here with, you know, in the summer you have more fresh fruit, fruit and melons around. And so I've seen a lot of those. Most of them said pest control informed me they were carpet bugs. I had some one time from not vacuuming due to depression. I am so sorry that you went through that. That's so sad. And I hope that you were able to resolve the bug issue. Someone says, and Hola says, I see lots of roly-poly bugs in some houses. And it depends on where you live. Those could be potato bugs. The potato bugs roll themselves up into a little ball. And those are real popular in farming areas. And so that's interesting when you see those as well. And I think those are also harmless. But boy, they're nasty because you end up seeing them everywhere. You vacuum the floor. You go to inspect your work. You've got your flashlight. And then all of a sudden they're back. And you're like, where do they come from? I just, I just vacuumed. The spring is a great time to address doing a deep clean on your floors. Getting your carpets professionally cleaned if you can, getting your rugs cleaned, doing a deep clean on the grout in your bathrooms. It springs a good time to tackle that. So it doesn't become overwhelming. Hola says, and remember that Hola's been in the cleaning industry for 30 years. Also clean the lips of appliances inside the doors. This is so important. This is like, for example, like the shower door where you have the sliding shower glass door. And then there's that little lip there that needs to be cleaned on the inside. If you've got a sliding door that goes from the kitchen outside to the patio, inside that is gonna have a whole bunch of gunk. In the spring, and we noticed this a lot when we open our windows after the fall, we open our windows and there's a whole bunch of gunk and little bugs and all that kind of stuff in the window tracks that all needs to be cleaned as well. So if you are gonna open your windows, make sure that that's on your to-do list and that you have a really good vacuum and you have some good all-purpose cleaner. And then you have the oxo deep cleaning brushes, which are my little favorite brushes that just fit in there perfectly and allow you to clean that. The one end of this wall, and I don't have one with me. You guys, I feel naked. I don't have my stuff with me. You're probably... I know. And they say when I die, they're gonna bury me with a Swiffer Duster. I'm an oxo deep cleaning brushes because I have them with me at all times. Go ahead, I'm sorry. The one has a little tiny rubber spatula on the end and this is specifically good for the shower doors and also the window tracks because you can get way into the corners and pick all that stuff out with the rubber spatula end. It's very small and it's pointy on the end and that way it doesn't scratch anything, especially if it's a customer's home, you don't wanna scratch those fixtures. Well, Ola was talking about the lips of appliances. I was showing homes to a client and she would open the dishwasher in every home and everything looked so nice and clean in all the homes but she would open it and if the gasket on the door was it, she's like, oh, these people aren't really clean. It might look clean but they're not really clean. They're not deep cleaning their home and so people, you know, be surprised what people will look at when you're showing your home and what people are gonna focus on. But that's a good, so now I clean that all the time. It looked like we were saying something Erin but I didn't hear you. Oh, your sound is gone. Oh, we can't hear you. Well, the good news is that me and Brooke just get into all the talking. That's right, that's right. But I think there is so many similarities between just spring cleaning and good maintenance cleans just so things don't get overwhelming and I think that's why this is such an important topic for real estate, for people who are first time home buyers or getting their homes ready to sell or cleaning. It's just so important to be able to tackle these things periodically and not get weighed down by this whole huge, oh, my house is falling apart, I have to do everything. If you keep it in manageable chunks, it's gonna, I think everybody's gonna find it more manageable. Well, Brooke, as a realtor, you help a lot of people in the spring with home sales and so there is a push and I think that's one of the terms and one of the reasons why people call it spring cleaning is because there's a really big push during this time of year for people to get their homes ready to put on the market. What are you seeing when you go through people's homes that is on a checklist of things that either a house cleaner or a homeowner should have done that sometimes gets missed? Well, there are things that are gonna make a buyer think that the home is not just not clean but maybe not well maintained, like those air filters. The vent at the bottom of a refrigerator, the vent above your cooktop, making sure that looking into the oven and making sure there's no fire hazards there, those kinds of things. If the doors that everybody, like Regina, you were saying as a realtor, you go in and you touch every surface in the home, door handles, sometimes they're just gross and it's because they're touched so often and you've got little kids with those sticky jelly hands. Yeah, and just like around the doors. So just those are things that people touch, they see and the entrance of a home. I can't tell you how many homes I'll go to show and the lock is it well maintained. The key doesn't work very well. And I get it, a lot of people don't use their front door to get into their home. They're going in through a side door or garage door but just those kinds of things, your front entrance, make sure it looks nice and fresh and inviting even if you're not ready to sell your home. It's gonna make it more enjoyable for you. It's gonna increase your sense of pride and if somebody's looking at the home, a couple doors down that's for sale, may even help your property value at some point. So just my advice would be to look at things that are gonna indicate that your home's well maintained, that you're taking care of the systems of your home like your HVAC system, your appliances, like the refrigerator, that all of those components of it are clean and just make your home feel welcoming and inviting. Yeah, super basic things. I went and I showed a home. We had really excited buyers the other day. The home itself seems to be in great condition except all of the little tiny details. The lock on the front door was literally loose. You could move it up and down. We couldn't even get in the front door. We had to go around and unlock the back door in order to enter the home. So it was literally just loose. The little screws holding in something as simple as the toilet paper roll. It was loose and so it was just wobbly. The screws weren't in the plates around the plugs in the wall and they were just loose. Some light bulbs were just burnt out. Nothing expensive at all. It's literally changing a couple of little light bulbs and tightening some screws. That was it. But it was all of the little things combined that made them feel like they didn't want the home just because there wasn't attention to the little tiny details. I would also say, you can only make a first impression once when somebody went into the driveway, there's that whole curb appeal and just having the driveway pressure washed, the sidewalk pressure washed. If you've lived in a house for more than a couple of years, it should be pressure washed. If it gives the house- A huge facelift. It cleans it up. It looks so nice and tidy. It makes a world of difference. Just simple things like that. Something that seems to be missed a lot is only AC units, the lines going into the house, the insulation, it's usually black insulation and it will crack in the heat and slowly fall apart over the years. Needs to be replaced every three to four years, costs almost nothing. But when people see that cracking and falling off in their mind, there's a big problem with the AC unit all of a sudden. How old is that AC and why is it all falling apart when we're talking insulation for a few bucks on the outside? So even things as simple as that, just make a world of difference. And when it comes to things like your siding, a lot of people don't think about this, especially on the sides of the house where there's a fence closed or something like that. You start to get like mildew or a waterline, especially if you've got a sprinkler or something that's hitting the home. Maybe you guys have a good idea of how you could clean that. There's a lot of different types of siding and you get kind of that mildewy thing going on and it looks terrible. It's not really affecting the house at all, but people take one look at that and they're like, oh, this house is gross. Oh, this is terrible, you know. Could anybody speak to that for a moment? Well, they do have bleach sprays. There are specific bleach sprays that are designed for the outside of siding that's good on just regular siding of homes like vinyl siding. You can also use it on brick and then you can also use it on hearty plank. So there's some stuff that's really good that's out there. I'll be honest with you, the swimming pool chlorine is pretty much less expensive than the regular bleach products that are out there and it does the same thing. So a lot of companies will use that in exchange. The key is that you gotta make sure that all of the plants that are around the side of the perimeter of the house are either covered or that they're not gonna get splash off from doing that on the side of the house. And if that's a worry, you can wet all the plants down, really wet them down before you spray and that way it kind of resists the water. It's not soaking that in as like the only water it's gonna get that has the bleach in it. So there are companies that will do pressure washing and it is a great investment. I know we're running short on time and I wanna be sensitive to this, but we have a couple of questions that have come in and Mo Sim said there's a question for the real estate agent. So this is one for you guys. I currently own a studio apartment, no mortgage, 30K, HELOC outstanding, investment property, visible and has a more viable and has a mortgage. And then another note that says I own in North Carolina, the investment property is in Charlotte, North Carolina. So Brooke, this might be a question for you. You own in New York. So Mo, it looks like you live in New York and the investment property is in Charlotte and I'm not sure of the question. Is it viable as if you should? Maybe viable to sell or? I'm not sure I understand the question. This one says I'm sure if I should buy a one bedroom and sell the studio, if I buy the one bedroom, I will not have as much free income until the studio sells. So it sounds like an investment question. I'll tell you what I can do is I can leave access to all the realtors that are on here today in the notes below this after we're done on at least our channel. And then if you guys have questions, they can, you can get in touch with them there and they can get in touch with you back. Yeah, great. Love that. Yeah, we can absolutely do that. So, well thank you guys so, so much for being part of this today and for all of your wealth of information. It's so fun having all of you guys and fun interacting with these questions. We hope to see you guys here next we same time, same place for another exciting adventure of topics to be covered. Awesome. Thank you so much for having me. This was awesome. Thank you. It was great. Appreciate you. Really, really appreciate you guys and thank you everyone who's listening. We are happy to have the questions.