Cybersecurity researchers from Quarkslab discovered two vulnerabilities in the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 2.0, which could spell big trouble for “billions” of devices.
TPM 2.0 is a chip that PC manufacturers have added to motherboards since mid-2016. The technology, as Microsoft explains, is designed to provide “security-related functions”. The chip helps generate, store, and limit the use of cryptographic keys.
Many TPMs, the company further explained, incorporate physical security mechanisms to make them invulnerable.
TPM 2.0 error
Today, researchers Francisco Falcon and Ivan Arce discovered out-of-bounds read (CVE-2023-1017) and out-of-bounds write (CVE-2023-1018) vulnerabilities, which could allow threat actors to escalate privileges and steal sensitive data from vulnerable endpoints (Opens in a new tab). The impact of errors may vary from vendor to vendor, BleepingComputer said.
The CERT Coordination Center published an alert about the flaws, and claimed to have notified vendors for several months, although only a few of the entities confirmed that they were affected.
“An attacker with access to a TPM-command interface can send maliciously crafted commands to the module and trigger these vulnerabilities,” warns CERT. “This allows read-only access to sensitive data or overwriting conventionally protected data that can only be used by the TPM (eg, cryptographic keys).”
Organizations concerned about these errors should migrate to one of the 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 that has already issued a security advisory about these flaws, with others expected to follow soon.
To exploit the flaw, a threat actor must have authenticated access to a device. However, any malware running on an endpoint has that requirement, the researchers warn.
Via: BleepingComputer (Opens in a new tab)