Pierluigi Paganini in Breaking NewsSecurity

Intel addresses 2 high-severity issues in BIOS firmware of several processors

Intel disclosed two high-severity vulnerabilities, tracked as CVE-2021-0157 and CVE-2021-0158, that affect the BIOS firmware in several processor families.

Intel disclosed two high-severity vulnerabilities that affect the BIOS firmware in several processor families, both vulnerabilities have received a CVSS v3 score of 8.2. The vulnerabilities, tracked as CVE-2021-0157 and CVE-2021-0158, were discovered by researchers at SentinelOne and can be exploited by an attacker with physical access to the device to elevate privileges.

CVE-2021-0157 is due to insufficient control flow management in the BIOS firmware for some Intel(R) Processors and may allow a privileged user to potentially escalate privileged via local access.

CVE-2021-0158 is an improper input validation in the BIOS firmware for some Intel(R) Processors and may allow a privileged user to potentially escalate privileged via local access.

The chipmaker did not share technical details about the vulnerabilities.

Below is the list of affected products:

Intel® Xeon® Processor E Family
Intel® Xeon® Processor E3 v6 Family
Intel® Xeon® Processor W Family
3rd Generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processors
11th Generation Intel® Core™ Processors
10th Generation Intel® Core™ Processors
7th Generation Intel® Core™ Processors
Intel® Core™ X-series Processors
Intel® Celeron® Processor N Series
Intel® Pentium® Silver Processor Series

Intel recommends users of impacted processors to update to the latest version.

Experts warn of the impact of these vulnerabilities because vendors of motherboards do not support BIOS updating process for long.

This means that users will be not able to address the flaw. In order to mitigate the risk of exploitation for both issue it is importanto to protect the access to BIOS settings with strong passwors.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, chips)

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Pierluigi Paganini: Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.