Intel data center SSD drives allow hackers to take control of servers
Since 2018 multiple digital forensics specialists started to reveal the existence of severe Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities, which affect Intel’s advanced processors. Now, new researches have uncovered new flaws in the company’s software.
The new vulnerabilities, discovered by
Eclypsium firm specialist Jesse Michael and internal Intel staff, significantly
affect the Intel processor diagnostic tool, as well as and another flaw in the Intel
processor data center of solid-state drives.
The vulnerability in the processor diagnostic
tool, tracked as CVE-2019-11133, would allow an authenticated user to generate
an escalation of privileges, access sensitive information, or perform denial of
service (DoS) attacks using a local access. The vulnerability received an
8.2/10 score on the Common
Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) scale.
The second vulnerability is present on Intel’s
S4500 and S4600 series solid-state drives. If exploited, this flaw would allow
an unauthenticated threat actor to scale privileges on the system through a
physical access point; the vulnerability received a score of 5.3/10 on the CVSS
scale, so it is not considered a critical flaw.
Intel received reports from the digital
forensics expert and was able to release the corresponding update patches
before the 90-day deadline for vulnerability public disclosure.
Intel has received multiple bug reports
recently. A few weeks ago it was revealed that there were multiple flaws in the
firmware of NUC, the minicomputer developed by Intel, in addition to critical flaws
in other developments of the company, such as computer cards and RAID 3 web
consoles; in total, Intel has fixed 25 critical vulnerabilities so far this
year.
According to digital forensics specialists from
the International Institute of Cyber Security (IICS) the presence of so many
vulnerabilities is an indicator of how little-updated the company’s security
strategy is, although considerable efforts are being made in the release update
patches, experts believe it is necessary to review the company’s security
approach completely, otherwise increasingly serious security threats could
appear in the future.
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