Potential security vulnerabilities have been identified in the BIOS (UEFI Firmware) for certain HP PC products

Overview

A vulnerability has been discovered in certain HP PC BIOS, which could allow for local arbitrary code execution. The BIOS is a firmware which is used to provide runtime services for operating systems and programs and to perform hardware initialization during the booting process. Successful exploitation of this vulnerability could allow for local arbitrary code execution with kernel level privileges. An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights.

Threat Intelligence

A proof-of-concept writeup was posted to GitHub on May 10, 2022. However, there are no reports of active exploitation of the vulnerability.

System Affected
This vulnerability is found in the BIOS of numerous HP systems. For a full list of affected systems and BIOS versions, please click here:

Risk
Government:

- Large and medium government entities: High

- Small government entities: High

Businesses:

- Large and medium business entities: High
- Small business entities: High

Home Users: Low

Technical Summary

This vulnerability is exploited by taking advantage of System Management Interrupt Handler (SMI Handler)’s functionality to execute code from overwritten memory. The CVEs associated with this vulnerability are: CVE-2021-3808 and CVE-2021-3809.

Recommendations

We recommend the following actions be taken: