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Security Misinformation: Blaming the Failings of 'Secure' Boot (Kill Switch) on "Linux" and "Framework"
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Security Affairs ☛ 200,000 Linux systems from Framework are shipped with signed UEFI components vulnerable to Secure Boot bypass [Ed: The issue is not Linux but UEFI]
Firmware security company Eclypsium warns that about 200,000 Linux systems from Framework are shipped with signed UEFI components vulnerable to Secure Boot bypass, allowing bootkit installation and persistence.
The experts pointed out that signed UEFI shells aren’t traditional backdoors placed by threat actors, instead, they’re legitimate diagnostic tools signed with trusted certificates that support functionality that can be abused to bypass security controls in the boot process.
Eclypsium found that Framework shipped signed UEFI shells containing a “memory modify” (mm) command granting direct read/write access to system memory. “mm” was integrated for diagnostic purposes, but it can be exploited to overwrite the gSecurity2 UEFI variable with NULL, breaking Secure Boot’s signature verification and disabling module signature checks.
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PC Gamer ☛ 'Systems that have a secure boot process, in reality, do not': Major backdoors have been discovered in Framework Linux machines and it might just be the tip of the iceberg [Ed: Not a Linux issue at all]
That's according to the security company, which notes that UEFI shells that enable these vulnerabilities aren't backdoors placed by bad actors for malicious purposes (via Bleeping Computer). "Instead, they’re legitimate diagnostic tools signed with trusted certificates that contain functionality to effectively bypass security controls we’ve built into the boot process" the company says. "The implications? Systems that have a secure boot process, in reality, do not."