Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2022/07/new-ufei-rootkit.html
Kaspersky is reporting on a new UFEI rootkit that survives reinstalling the operating system and replacing the hard drive. From an article:
The firmware compromises the UEFI, the low-level and highly opaque chain of firmware required to boot up nearly every modern computer. As the software that bridges a PC’s device firmware with its operating system, the UEFI—short for Unified Extensible Firmware Interface—is an OS in its own right. It’s located in an SPI-connected flash storage chip soldered onto the computer motherboard, making it difficult to inspect or patch the code. Because it’s the first thing to run when a computer is turned on, it influences the OS, security apps, and all other software that follows.
Both links have lots of technical details; the second contains a list of previously discovered UFEI rootkits. Also relevant are the NSA’s capabilities—now a decade old—in this area.
Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2022/01/twelve-year-old-linux-vulnerability-discovered-and-patched.html
It’s a privilege escalation vulnerability:
Linux users on Tuesday got a major dose of bad news — a 12-year-old vulnerability in a system tool called Polkit gives attackers unfettered root privileges on machines running most major distributions of the open source operating system.
Previously called PolicyKit, Polkit manages system-wide privileges in Unix-like OSes. It provides a mechanism for nonprivileged processes to safely interact with privileged processes. It also allows users to execute commands with high privileges by using a component called pkexec, followed by the command.
It was discovered in October, and disclosed last week — after most Linux distributions issued patches. Of course, there’s lots of Linux out there that never gets patched, so expect this to be exploited in the wild for a long time.
Of course, this vulnerability doesn’t give attackers access to the system. They have to get that some other way. But if they get access, this vulnerability gives them root privileges.
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