Just about every Windows and Linux device vulnerable to new LogoFAIL firmware attack::UEFIs booting Windows and Linux devices can be hacked by malicious logo images.
Every device booting from UEFI is vulnerable. It’s neither a Windows nor Linux issue, it’s UEFI.
Because UEFI has Code-execution capability before OS loads. In this case it’s for the logo
It’s not related to Windows or Linux, but as the article notes, Apple devices that use UEFI are not vulnerable (and current ones don’t use it anymore and therefore aren’t vulnerable either), so I guess that’s where the “Windows or Linux” comes from.
And I can install FreeBSD or OpenBSD on a non-Apple machine, and it will have the same security issue.
The article is written inaccurately. The issue is that the industry-standard pre-OS-load firmware patterns and interfaces (BIOS/EFI/UEFI) are vulnerable. Apple uses nonstandard/highly customized hardware, firmware, and software (because they’re more or less completely vertically integrated), and their custom stuff doesn’t have the same flaw due to that customization.
There are more OS’ on PC then Windows and Linux. So they should really just say PCs running UEFI. Any PC running a different firmware like core boot or libreboot is not affected. Apple devices are not vulnerable because they don’t use UEFI. Apple doesn’t do the U(nified) bit and built their own EFI.
different firmware like core boot or libreboot
What’s the market share of these? Are they even relevant?
Can anyone explain to me if this is an actual risk outside a highly controlled environment? AFAIK, it’s a pretty non-casual thing to change the UEFI boot logo, so wouldn’t that make this pretty hard to actually pull off?
The article quoted the researchers who indicated it can be done with remote access by using other attack vectors. This is because most UEFI systems store the logo on disk in the EFI system partition. It doesn’t need to do anything crazy like compile and flash a modified firmware. All it needs to do is overwrite the logo file on disk.
If you have access to directly write to arbitrary disk locations you already have full control. Why bother with overwriting the logo file with a malicious payload if you can just overwrite the actual kernel…
Because this can persist beyond an OS rebuild or patch. You infect the BIOS and you’re on the device until the BIOS is free reflashed. And who ever does that?
If it’s on the disk, why doesn’t the image get removed when I erase all partitions? Does the firmware put it back?
I want my computer to run an open-source BIOS/UEFI but the set of systems supported by projects like Libreboot is unfortunately rather limited.
Another instance of Let’s replace something that’s been working for ages with something worse but shiny.
What are you going on about?
Do you mean BIOS versus UEFI? That ship sailed over a decade ago. And I don’t think anyone actually believes that plain BIOS is superior in any way to UEFI.
Can’t get hacked by this if you never reboot!
