Intel vPRO Processor Vulnerability

As many of you have heard, Intel recently released a bulletin on a critical escalation vulnerability (CVE-2017-5689), which was nicknamed “Silent Bob is Silent” by the researchers.  The researchers claim it affects Intel vPro processors from 2010 till now.  A majority of the systems were sold by Dell, Fujitsu, HP, Intel, and Lenovo.  This chipset was made specifically for enterprise administrators to manage their servers, laptops, and desktops.  That is the reason this vulnerability is so bad, as the vulnerability will have full control of the system without the Operating System knowing.  Since this is a hardware vulnerability, it doesn’t matter what Operating System, if any, these machines are running. It does not affect Mac’s, even though Intel does supply Apple with chips, this vulnerability only affects Windows-based machines.

Per Intel “There is an escalation of privilege vulnerability in Intel® Active Management Technology (AMT), Intel® Standard Manageability (ISM), and Intel® Small Business Technology versions firmware versions 6.x, 7.x, 8.x 9.x, 10.x, 11.0, 11.5, and 11.6 that can allow an unprivileged attacker to gain control of the manageability features provided by these products. This vulnerability does not exist on Intel-based consumer PCs.”

So what does this mean for you?  First, check to find out if your machine is vulnerable by running this vulnerability detection software by Intel.

If you are vulnerable, Intel has links to all the major firmware updates located here.  Unfortunately, Windows Update will not patch this, as this isn’t a Windows specific issue, it is a hardware vulnerability, so you will need to patch this one manually.

You are only exploitable by someone on your network, so you have some level of protection when you are behind your corporate firewall, but this is classified as Critical by Intel, and Thrive recommends patching if you are vulnerable to this bug. Contact us today for more information!