Quote:Billions of Windows and Linux devices are affected by a serious GRUB2 bootloader vulnerability that can be exploited to install persistent and stealthy malware, firmware security company Eclypsium revealed on Wednesday.
 
The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2020-10713 and dubbed BootHole, has a CVSS score of 8.2 and Eclypsium says it affects all operating systems that use GRUB2 with Secure Boot, a mechanism designed to protect the boot process from attacks. In fact, the company says the flaw impacts machines that use Secure Boot even if they’re not using GRUB2.
 
“Almost all signed versions of GRUB2 are vulnerable, meaning virtually every Linux distribution is affected,” Eclypsium explained in its report. “In addition, GRUB2 supports other operating systems, kernels and hypervisors such as Xen. The problem also extends to any Windows device that uses Secure Boot with the standard Microsoft Third Party UEFI Certificate Authority.”

The company says the vulnerability affects a majority of laptop, desktop, workstation and server devices, as well as network appliances and equipment used in the healthcare, industrial and financial sectors.
 
Threat actors could exploit this vulnerability to install bootkits or malicious bootloaders that would give them control of the targeted device. Eclypsium researchers noted that exploiting the vulnerability requires administrator privileges on the targeted device, but successful exploitation enables the attacker to obtain even higher privileges and achieve persistence.

Quote:Microsoft says BootHole impacts Windows 10, 8.1, Server 2012, Server 2016, Server 2019 and Server versions 1903, 1909 and 2004. The company is working on an update that will be rolled out to users via the Windows Update system.