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posted by Fnord666 on Thursday November 23 2017, @12:09PM   Printer-friendly
from the get-your-patches-here dept.

It's time to update your Management Engine:

Intel has issued a security alert that management firmware on a number of recent PC, server, and Internet-of-Things processor platforms are vulnerable to remote attack. Using the vulnerabilities, the most severe of which was uncovered by Mark Ermolov and Maxim Goryachy of Positive Technologies Research, remote attackers could launch commands on a host of Intel-based computers, including laptops and desktops shipped with Intel Core processors since 2015. They could gain access to privileged system information, and millions of computers could essentially be taken over as a result of the bug. Most of the vulnerabilities require physical access to the targeted device, but one allows remote attacks with administrative access.

The company has posted a detection tool on its support website for Windows and Linux to help identify systems that are vulnerable. In the security alert, members of Intel's security team stated that "in response to issues identified by external researchers, Intel has performed an in-depth comprehensive security review of its Intel® Management Engine (ME), Intel® Trusted Execution Engine (TXE), and Intel® Server Platform Services (SPS) with the objective of enhancing firmware resilience."

Intel® Management Engine Critical Firmware Update (Intel SA-00086)

U.S. government warns about cyber bug in Intel chips

The U.S. government on Tuesday urged businesses to act on an Intel Corp alert about security flaws in widely used computer chips as industry researchers scrambled to understand the impact of the newly disclosed vulnerability.

The Department of Homeland Security gave the guidance a day after Intel said it had identified security vulnerabilities in remote-management software known as 'Management Engine' that shipped with eight types of processors used in business computers sold by Dell Technologies, Lenovo, HP Inc, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and other manufacturers."

Security experts said that it was not clear how difficult it would be to exploit the vulnerabilities to launch attacks, though they found the disclosure troubling because the affected chips were widely used.

"These vulnerabilities affect essentially every business computer and server with an Intel processor released in the last two years," said Jay Little, a security engineer with cyber consulting firm Trail of Bits.

The official warning is here. Good luck to everybody! Good luck.

Also at Reuters and the EFF.


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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday November 23 2017, @01:11PM (1 child)

    by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Thursday November 23 2017, @01:11PM (#600639) Homepage Journal

    What, you don't delid all your chips and inspect all the logic before you power them up? Slacker.

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  • (Score: 2) by RS3 on Thursday November 23 2017, @06:09PM

    by RS3 (6367) on Thursday November 23 2017, @06:09PM (#600738)

    No need, I electrically fuzz them. Any suspicious output gets tazed bro.