Yesterday, at the BlackHat Asia 2017 security conference, researchers from cyber-security firm Cylance disclosed two vulnerabilities in the firmware of Gigabyte BRIX small computing devices, which allow an attacker to write malicious content to the UEFI firmware.
During their presentation, researchers installed a proof-of-concept UEFI ransomware, preventing the BRIX devices from booting, but researchers say the same flaws can be used to plant rootkits that allow attackers to persist malware for years.
Cylance researchers said they've identified these flaws at the start of the year, and have worked with Gigabyte, American Megatrends Inc. (AMI), and CERT/CC to fix the flaws in time.
Affected Gigabyte devices include GB-BSi7H-6500 (firmware version vF6), and GB-BXi7-5775 (firmware version vF2).
Gigabyte is expected to release firmware vF7 for GB-BSi7H-6500 devices in the upcoming days. The GB-BXi7-5775 line is not being produced anymore and has reached EOL (End Of Life), so Gigabyte won't be releasing a new firmware for this series.
Source: BleepingComputer
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Thursday April 06 2017, @09:12AM
Or, print a SOIC8-to-SOIC8 adapter PCB (like DIP8-to-SOIC8 [ebay.com] as used for SPI writers) that reroutes the WC* pin of the EEPROM to the ground pin thus preventing write operations.
Kinda like this [cimarrontechnology.com] but without the extra 8 pins and with different routing so you'll only print a PCB and people would stick the pins themselves so no extra soldering steps are take by either party.
*Write Control. See page 6 http://www.st.com/content/ccc/resource/technical/document/datasheet/b7/de/9b/f6/03/28/4e/8e/CD00290537.pdf/files/CD00290537.pdf/jcr:content/translations/en.CD00290537.pdf [st.com]
compiling...