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An analysis of firmware images across devices from Dell, HP, and Lenovo has revealed the presence of outdated versions of the  OpenSSL  cryptographic library, underscoring a supply chain risk. EFI Development Kit, aka  EDK , is an open source implementation of the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface ( UEFI ), which functions as an interface between the operating system and the firmware embedded in the device's hardware. The firmware development environment, which is in its second iteration (EDK II), comes with its own cryptographic package called  CryptoPkg  that, in turn, makes use of services from the OpenSSL project. Per firmware security company Binarly, the firmware image associated with Lenovo Thinkpad enterprise devices was found to use three different versions of OpenSSL: 0.9.8zb, 1.0.0a, and 1.0.2j, the last of which was released in 2018. What's more, one of the firmware modules named InfineonTpmUpdateDxe relied on OpenSSL version 0.9.8zb that was shipped on Au

The North Korea-backed Lazarus Group has been observed deploying a Windows rootkit by taking advantage of an exploit in a Dell firmware driver, highlighting new tactics adopted by the state-sponsored adversary. The Bring Your Own Vulnerable Driver ( BYOVD ) attack, which took place in the autumn of 2021, is another variant of the threat actor's espionage-oriented activity called Operation In(ter)ception  that's directed against aerospace and defense industries. "The campaign started with spear-phishing emails containing malicious Amazon-themed documents and targeted an employee of an aerospace company in the Netherlands, and a political journalist in Belgium," ESET researcher Peter Kálnai  said . Attack chains unfolded upon the opening of the lure documents, leading to the distribution of malicious droppers that were trojanized versions of open source projects, corroborating recent reports from Google's  Mandiant  and  Microsoft . ESET said it uncovered evid

Identities now transcend human boundaries. Within each line of code and every API call lies a non-human identity. These entities act as programmatic access keys, enabling authentication and facilitating interactions among systems and services, which are essential for every API call, database query, or storage account access. As we depend on multi-factor authentication and passwords to safeguard human identities, a pressing question arises: How do we guarantee the security and integrity of these non-human counterparts? How do we authenticate, authorize, and regulate access for entities devoid of life but crucial for the functioning of critical systems? Let's break it down. The challenge Imagine a cloud-native application as a bustling metropolis of tiny neighborhoods known as microservices, all neatly packed into containers. These microservices function akin to diligent worker bees, each diligently performing its designated task, be it processing data, verifying credentials, or

Five new security weaknesses have been disclosed in Dell BIOS that, if successfully exploited, could lead to code execution on vulnerable systems, joining the likes of firmware vulnerabilities recently uncovered in Insyde Software's  InsydeH2O  and HP Unified Extensible Firmware Interface ( UEFI ). Tracked as CVE-2022-24415, CVE-2022-24416, CVE-2022-24419, CVE-2022-24420, and CVE-2022-24421, the high-severity vulnerabilities are rated 8.2 out of 10 on the CVSS scoring system. "The active exploitation of all the discovered vulnerabilities can't be detected by firmware integrity monitoring systems due to limitations of the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) measurement," firmware security company Binarly, which discovered the latter three flaws,  said  in a write-up. "The remote device health attestation solutions will not detect the affected systems due to the design limitations in visibility of the firmware runtime." All the flaws relate to improper input v

Cybersecurity researchers on Thursday disclosed a chain of vulnerabilities affecting the BIOSConnect feature within Dell Client BIOS that could be abused by a privileged network adversary to gain arbitrary code execution at the BIOS/UEFI level of the affected device. "As the attacker has the ability to remotely execute code in the pre-boot environment, this can be used to subvert the operating system and undermine fundamental trust in the device," researchers from enterprise device security firm Eclypsium said . "The virtually unlimited control over a device that this attack can provide makes the fruit of the labor well worth it for the attacker." In all, the flaws affect 128 Dell models spanning across consumer and business laptops, desktops, and tablets, totalling an estimated 30 million individual devices. Worse, the weaknesses also impact computers that have  Secure Boot  enabled, a security feature designed to prevent  rootkits from being installed  at boot

PC maker Dell has issued an update to fix multiple critical privilege escalation vulnerabilities that went undetected since 2009, potentially allowing attackers to gain kernel-mode privileges and cause a denial-of-service condition. The issues, reported to Dell by researchers from SentinelOne on Dec. 1, 2020, reside in a firmware update driver named "dbutil_2_3.sys" that comes pre-installed on its devices. Hundreds of millions of desktops, laptops, notebooks, and tablets manufactured by the company are said to be vulnerable. "Dell dbutil_2_3.sys driver contains an insufficient access control vulnerability which may lead to escalation of privileges, denial-of-service, or information disclosure. Local authenticated user access is required," Dell  said  in an advisory. All five separate flaws have been assigned the CVE identifier CVE-2021-21551 with a CVSS score of 8.8. A breakdown of the shortcomings is as follows -  CVE-2021-21551: Local Elevation Of Privilege

A team of researchers today unveiled two critical security vulnerabilities in Dell Wyse Thin clients that could have potentially allowed attackers to remotely execute malicious code and access arbitrary files on affected devices. The flaws, which were uncovered by healthcare cybersecurity provider CyberMDX and reported to Dell in June 2020, affects all devices running ThinOS versions 8.6 and below. Dell has addressed both the vulnerabilities in an  update  released today. The flaws also have a CVSS score of 10 out of 10, making them critical in severity. Thin clients are typically computers that run from resources stored on a central server instead of a localized hard drive. They work by establishing a remote connection to the server, which takes care of launching and running applications and storing relevant data. Tracked as CVE-2020-29491 and CVE-2020-29492 , the security shortcomings in Wyse's thin clients stem from the fact that the FTP sessions used to pull firmware upd

Computer manufacturing giant Dell has released a new security tool for its commercial customers that aims to protect their computers from stealthy and sophisticated cyberattacks involving the compromise of the BIOS. Dubbed ' SafeBIOS Events & Indicators of Attack ' (IoA), the new endpoint security software is a behavior-based threat detection system that alerts users when BIOS settings of their computers undergo some unusual changes. BIOS (Basic Input Output System) is a small but highly-privileged program that handles critical operations and starts your computer before handing it over to your operating system. Protecting the BIOS program is crucial because: Changes to the system BIOS settings could allow malicious software to run during the boot process, Once a hacker takes over the BIOS, he can stealthily control the targeted computer and gain access to the data stored on it, Malware in BIOS remains persistent and doesn't get away even when you format or

Dell's SupportAssist utility that comes pre-installed on millions of Dell laptops and PCs contains a security vulnerability that could allow malicious software or rogue logged-in users to escalate their privileges to administrator-level and access sensitive information. Discovered by security researchers at SafeBreach Labs , the vulnerability, identified as CVE-2019-12280, is a privilege-escalation issue and affects Dell's SupportAssist application for business PCs (version 2.0) and home PCs (version 3.2.1 and all prior versions). Dell SupportAssist, formerly known as Dell System Detect, checks the health of your system's hardware and software, alerting customers to take appropriate action to resolve them. To do so, it runs on your computer with SYSTEM-level permissions. With this high-level privileges, the utility interacts with the Dell Support website and automatically detects Service Tag or Express Service Code of your Dell product, scans the existing device d

If you use a Dell computer, then beware — hackers could compromise your system remotely. Bill Demirkapi, a 17-year-old independent security researcher, has discovered a critical remote code execution vulnerability in the Dell SupportAssist utility that comes pre-installed on most Dell computers . Dell SupportAssist , formerly known as Dell System Detect , checks the health of your computer system's hardware and software. The utility has been designed to interact with the Dell Support website and automatically detect Service Tag or Express Service Code of your Dell product, scan the existing device drivers and install missing or available driver updates, as well as perform hardware diagnostic tests. If you are wondering how it works, Dell SupportAssist in the background runs a web server locally on the user system, either on port 8884, 8883, 8886, or port 8885, and accepts various commands as URL parameters to perform some-predefined tasks on the computer, like collecting

Yes, Dell is going to acquire data storage company EMC in a deal worth $67 BILLLLLLION – the largest tech deal of all time. It's record-breaking... Computing giant Dell on Monday finally confirmed that the company is indeed going to purchase the company for creating what it calls " the world's largest privately-controlled, integrated technology company. " Most of you might not have heard of EMC corporation, but it is a tech titan that operates many of the services you use nowadays. EMC offers data center storage and data processing for big technology companies, and now it is been acquired by Dell. " The combination of Dell and EMC creates an enterprise solutions powerhouse bringing our customers industry leading innovation across their entire technology environment, " Michael Dell, CEO and chairman of Dell, said in a statement . The acquisition will benefit Dell to create a new company that will sell a broad range of both consumer as well as