MSI accidentally disables Secure Boot on hundreds of its motherboards:
One of the latest MSI UEFI updates accidentally disabled Secure Boot technology on hundreds of its motherboards, reports Bleeping Computer. As a consequence, over 290 motherboards for AMD and Intel processors can run insecure operating systems, which can be harmful.
MSI's firmware update version 7C02v3C released on January 18, 2022, comes with Image Execution Policy set to 'Always Execute' by default, which allows the PC to boot an operating system that lacks proper signature by its developer. This means that a computer can boot an OS that may have been tampered with, which is an insecure policy as the operating system may be infected or have malicious intent.
The discovery was recently made by Polish security researcher named Dawid Potocki. The researcher noted that he contacted MSI, but did not receive any response, which essentially means that so far the motherboard maker has not fixed its Secure Boot.
See article for a list of motherboard models.
(Score: 3, Informative) by tangomargarine on Saturday January 21 2023, @03:46PM
Yeah, I thought Rule Zero of computer security was "if they have physical access, you're fucked"?
Unless of course you start doing things like Secure Boot that are extremely invasive and a pain for the customer if they ever go wrong...
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"