A few days ago we published news from the Black Hat 2013 conference and the fact that 2 ways to attack Windows 8 Secure Boot.
With the arrival of Windows 8 in 2012, Microsoftintroduced a new secure boot system for its operating system that wasn't just faster than previous versions of Windows, but was also supposedly much more secure. Last week, researchers at the Black Hat 2013 in Las Vegas presented two exploits that could allow a hacker to bypass Secure Boot in order to install a Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) bootkit.
In theory, computers with UEFI can only run software that has the appropriate digital signatures, which is to prevent malware from executing directly from booting, as shown in the diagram above. Researchers at Black Hat 2013 (Andrew Furtak, Oleksandr Bazhaniuk, and Yuriy Bulygin) demonstrated two exploits that were able to work flawlessly, not because of a flaw in the design of the Secure Boot setup, but because PC manufacturers have made mistakes in implementing UEFI, as Neowin reported today.
One problem was that some OEMs don't protect their firmware well enough, which allowed the research team to modify the code to run Secure Boot on an Asus VivoBook Q200E laptop. The other exploit allowed Windows 8 to run in user mode, which could make it easier for a hacker to bypass Secure Boot by using vulnerabilities in Flash, Java, or even Microsoft Office.
Specific details of the two exploits were not disclosed during the conference, but the research team has informed Microsoft and other OEMs about the security holes.
In a statement, Microsoft simply said that it is, “…working with its partners to ensure that Secure Boot provides security for our customers.”
