Intel Firmware Flaws Found

Another big firmware security issue affecting Intel processors, requires OEM updates.

US-CERT yesterday issued an
alert
in response to newly discovered vulnerabilities in Intels Management Engine (ME), Server Platform Services (SPS), and Trusted Execution Engine (TXE) firmware that could allow an attacker to wrest control of machines running Intel processors.
According to Intel, its processors affected by the vulns are:
6th, 7th & 8th Generation Intel Core Processor Family
Intel Xeon Processor E3-1200 v5 & v6 Product Family
Intel Xeon Processor Scalable Family
Intel Xeon Processor W Family
Intel Atom C3000 Processor Family
Apollo Lake Intel Atom Processor E3900 series
Apollo Lake Intel Pentium
Celeron N and J series Processors
Researchers with Positive Technologies Research initially found the vulnerabilities in the ME and reported them to Intel. The researchers say they will provide more details on their findings during
their presentation at Black Hat Europe
next month.
Intel ME is at the heart of a vast number of devices worldwide, which is why we felt it important to assess its security status. It sits deep below the OS and has visibility of a range of data, everything from information on the hard drive to the microphone and USB, said Maxim Goryachy, researcher at Positive Technologies. Given this privileged level of access, a hacker with malicious intent could also use it to attack a target below the radar of traditional software-based countermeasures such as anti-virus.
Intel, meanwhile, said the flaws could allow an attacker to impersonate ME, SPS or TXE, and therefore compromise the machines security; run code unnoticed by the user or the operating system, and to crash a system or cause instability to it.
The chip manufacturer advises
checking with OEMs to get a firmware update
, and released a
downloadable tool
to determine whether a machine contains the vulns. Intel highly recommends checking with your system OEM for updated firmware, the company wrote in its
security advisory
.
This is the second major firmware vulnerability issue for Intel this year. In early May, the company disclosed
a critical privilege-escalation bug in its Active Management Technology (AMT) firmware
used in many Intel chips that affected AMT firmware versions dating back to 2010.
That vulnerability, which was discovered by security firm Embedi, could allow an attacker to remotely delete or reinstall the operating system, control the mouse and keyboard, and execute malware on the machine. Intel patched the bug in a firmware update, but like the latest firmware finding, it was up to OEMs to issue it to users.
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