Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed particulars of a now-patched safety flaw in Phoenix SecureCore UEFI firmware that impacts a number of households of Intel Core desktop and cell processors.
Tracked as CVE-2024-0762 (CVSS rating: 7.5), the “UEFIcanhazbufferoverflow” vulnerability has been described as a case of a buffer overflow stemming from using an unsafe variable within the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) configuration that might outcome within the execution of malicious code.
“The vulnerability permits a neighborhood attacker to escalate privileges and achieve code execution inside the UEFI firmware throughout runtime,” provide chain safety agency Eclypsium stated in a report shared with The Hacker Information.
“Such a low-level exploitation is typical of firmware backdoors (e.g., BlackLotus) which can be more and more noticed within the wild. Such implants give attackers ongoing persistence inside a tool and infrequently, the power to evade higher-level safety measures operating within the working system and software program layers.”
Following accountable disclosure, the vulnerability was addressed by Phoenix Applied sciences in April 2024. PC maker Lenovo has additionally launched updates for the flaw as of final month.
“This vulnerability impacts gadgets utilizing Phoenix SecureCore firmware operating on choose Intel processor households, together with AlderLake, CoffeeLake, CometLake, IceLake, JasperLake, KabyLake, MeteorLake, RaptorLake, RocketLake, and TigerLake,” the firmware developer stated.
UEFI, a successor to BIOS, refers to motherboard firmware used throughout startup to initialize the {hardware} elements and cargo the working system through the boot supervisor.
The truth that UEFI is the primary code that is run with the highest privileges has made it a profitable goal for menace actors trying to deploy bootkits and firmware implants that may subvert safety mechanisms and preserve persistence with out being detected.
This additionally implies that vulnerabilities found within the UEFI firmware can pose a extreme provide chain danger, as they will impression many various merchandise and distributors directly.
“UEFI firmware is a number of the most high-value code on trendy gadgets, and any compromise of that code may give attackers full management and persistence on the gadget,” Eclypsium stated.
The event comes practically a month after the corporate disclosed an identical unpatched buffer overflow flaw in HP’s implementation of UEFI that impacts HP ProBook 11 EE G1, a tool that reached end-of-life (EoL) standing as of September 2020.
It additionally follows the disclosure of a software program assault referred to as TPM GPIO Reset that could possibly be exploited by attackers to entry secrets and techniques saved on disk by different working techniques or undermine controls which can be protected by the TPM akin to disk encryption or boot protections.
