Cybersecurity researchers at Quarkslab have discovered two vulnerabilities in the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 2.0 that could cause major problems for “billions” of devices.
TPM 2.0 is a chip that PC manufacturers have been adding to motherboards since mid-2016. The technology, as Microsoft explains, is designed to provide “security-related features.” The chip helps generate, store and limit the use of cryptographic keys.
Many TPMs, the company goes on to explain, contain physical security mechanisms to make them tamper-resistant.
TPM 2.0 error
Now researchers Francisco Falcon and Ivan Arce discovered read out-of-bounds (CVE-2023-1017) and write out-of-bounds (CVE-2023-1018) vulnerabilities, allowing threat actors to escalate privileges and steal sensitive data from vulnerable endpoints (opens in new tab). The impact of the defects may vary from supplier to supplier, Beeping computer said.
The CERT Coordination Center has published a warning about the errors, claiming to have been alerting suppliers for months, but only a handful of entities have confirmed they are affected.
“An attacker with access to a TPM command interface could send maliciously crafted commands to the module and activate these vulnerabilities,” CERT warned. “This allows read-only access to sensitive data or overwrites normally protected data that is only available to the TPM (e.g. cryptographic keys).”
Organizations concerned about these errors should move to one of these fixed versions:
TMP 2.0 v1.59 Errata version 1.4 or higher
TMP 2.0 v1.38 Errata version 1.13 or higher
TMP 2.0 v1.16 Errata version 1.6 or higher
Apparently, Lenovo is the only major OEM to have already issued a security advisory on these flaws, with others hopefully soon to follow.
To exploit the flaw, a threat actor must have authenticated access to a device. However, any malware already running on the endpoint would have that condition, the researchers warned.
Through: Beeping computer (opens in new tab)