News

UEFI BIOSes Are Threatened By New LightEater Malware

While the new UEFI BIOSes are neat and come with a lot of features, they are also miniaturised OSes in their own, which makes them as vulnerable as a normal OS. Security researchers Corey Kallenberg and Xeno Kovah proved at CanSecWest how easy it is for an unskilled individual to implant a so-called LightEater malware and infect the system in a few moments.

The researchers proved that unpatched BIOSes can easily be affected with a malware and virus, they pointed out that motherboards from manufacturers such as Gigabyte, Acer, MSI, HP and Asus are at risk, especially if the BIOS is not updated to the most recent version from the manufacturers’ website.

BIOS malwares are especially dangerous since, as the researchers point out, the OS antivirus or other antivirus softwares only protect the OS it is running and not the BIOS too. The malware is said to be able to infect huge number of systems by creating System Management Mode implants, which can be custom made for individual BIOSes with a simple pattern matching. They also point out that a BIOS from Gigabyte was found to be particularly insecure.

We didn’t even have to do anything special; we just had a kernel driver write an invalid instruction to the first instruction the CPU reads off the flash chip, and bam, it was out for the count, and never was able to boot again.

While the vulnerability is said to already be exploited by the NSA, the researchers are encouraging businesses and governments to take some extra time in updating their PCs to the latest BIOS in order to plug the security hole.

Thank you Guru3D for providing us with this information

Gabriel Roşu

Disqus Comments Loading...

Recent Posts

Assassin’s Creed Boss Calls Shadows’ Inclusivity Backlash ‘Devastating’

The Assassin's Creed Shadows development team has been facing a difficult time amid an ongoing…

2 hours ago

Yoshi-P Says He Would Like a Re-Release of Vagrant Story and Final Fantasy Tactics

More than twenty years after the launch of Vagrant Story, many are still dreaming of…

2 hours ago

Still Wakes the Deep 

LIVE THE HORROR: An immersive disaster story aboard a stunningly realised North Sea oil rig,…

7 hours ago

PHILIPS 275V8LA – 27 Inch QHD Monitor

The Philips VA LED display uses an advanced multi-domain vertical alignment technology that gives you…

7 hours ago

EPOMAKER Ajazz AK820 Pro 75% Gasket-mounted Mechanical Keyboard 

【TFT Screen: The Interactive Interface】This 75% mechanical keyboard comes equipped with a TFT Screen, serving…

7 hours ago

Funko Fusion

FANDOM FUSION Play as your favorite characters and wield their unique weapons and skills. Team…

7 hours ago