Lenovo laptop users should be especially careful. ESET has just announced that it has discovered three vulnerabilities (CVE-2021-3971, CVE-2021-3972, CVE-2021-3970) in the UEFI of Lenovo laptops.
Security gaps have been described as extremely critical. Exploits allow intruders to develop and execute malware in UEFI, such as LoJax or ESPecter on all affected devices.
ESET published all the essentials on its blog. Security vulnerabilities affect various Lenovo laptop models.
CVE-2021-3971, CVE-2021-3972
The first two of these security vulnerabilities - CVE-2021-3971, CVE-2021-3972 - affect UEFI firmware drivers.
Affected UEFI firmware drivers can be activated by intruders to disable SPI flash protection (BIOS control register bits and protected-range registers) or the ability to safely boot UEFI from a privileged user operation process during operating time systemic.
Exploiting these vulnerabilities allows intruders to successfully develop and execute SPI flash or ESP implants such as LoJax or UEFI ESPecter on affected devices.
CVE-2021-3970
During the investigation of the above security gaps, the third vulnerability was discovered. May damage SMM memory in SW SMI handler mode (CVE-2021-3970). The vulnerability allows arbitrary registrations to and from SMRAM, which could lead to malicious code execution with SMM privileges and possibly the use of an SPI flash implant.
All vulnerabilities discovered were reported to Lenovo on October 11, 2021. Lenovo confirmed the vulnerabilities on November 17, 2021 and registered the CVEs.
The list of affected devices includes more than a hundred different laptop models with millions of users worldwide, from affordable models like the Ideapad-3 to more advanced models like the Legion 5 Pro-16ACH6 or the Yoga Slim 9-14ITL05.
The full list of affected models was published in Lenovo Advisory. Lenovo systems that have been manufactured since February 25, 2022, are not affected.
