"MSI to Release Securer BIOS Settings After Critical Flaw Discovered"

Following the discovery of Secure Boot settings that left about 290 Micro-Star International's (MSI) motherboards exposed to malware, the company said it will provide new BIOS files. By default, the company's motherboards came with insecure security settings, a situation that will be rectified in a future update. Dawid Potocki, a security researcher, was the first to disclose information on the vulnerability after determining that his firmware accepted any OS image, regardless of whether it included a valid signature or not. Potocki revealed that MSI had Secure Boot set to 'Enabled,' but the default on motherboards was 'Always Execute,' resulting in the firmware accepting any OS image. Users who want the Microsoft-recommended Secure Boot settings must manually change the 'Image Execution Policy' to 'Deny Execute' in the motherboard's settings. Secure Boot is a firmware process put in place to protect the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI). It verifies the safety of files launched when a device starts by ensuring that each has a valid signature and terminates processes that fail these checks. Threat actors that breach core systems could gain full control of a victim's computer, resulting in data loss, or the installation of persistent malware, such as a rootkit, that can survive a complete system reinstallation. This article continues to discuss MSI's decision to release new BIOS files for its motherboards following the discovery of a critical flaw. 

ITPro reports "MSI to Release Securer BIOS Settings After Critical Flaw Discovered"