Critical Intel Flaw Afflicts Several Motherboards, Server Systems, Compute Modules

Intel is warning of a rare critical-severity vulnerability affecting several of its motherboards, server systems and compute modules. The flaw could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to achieve escalated privileges.

The recently patched flaw (CVE-2020-8708) ranks 9.6 out of 10 on the CVSS scale, making it critical. Dmytro Oleksiuk, who discovered the flaw, told Threatpost that it exists in the firmware of Emulex Pilot 3. This baseboard-management controller is a service processor that monitors the physical state of a computer, network server or other hardware devices via specialized sensors.

Emulex Pilot 3 is used by various motherboards, which aggregate all the server components into one system. Also impacted are various server operating systems, and some Intel compute modules, which are electronic circuits, packaged onto a circuit board, that provide various functions.

The critical flaw stems from improper-authentication mechanisms in these Intel products before version 1.59.

In bypassing authentication, an attacker would be able to access to the KVM console of the server. The KVM console can access the system consoles of network devices to monitor and control their functionality. The KVM console is like a remote desktop implemented in the baseboard management controller – it provides an access point to the display, keyboard and mouse of the remote server, Oleksiuk told Threatpost.

The flaw is dangerous as it’s remotely exploitable, and attackers don’t need to be authenticated to exploit it – though they need to be located in the same network segment as the vulnerable server, Oleksiuk told Threatpost.

“The exploit is quite simple and very reliable because it’s a design flaw,” Oleksiuk told Threatpost.

Beyond this critical flaw, Intel also fixed bugs tied to 22 critical-, high-, medium- and low-severity CVEs affecting its server board, systems and compute modules. Other high-severity flaws include a heap-based overflow (CVE-2020-8730) that’s exploitable as an authenticated user; incorrect execution-assigned permissions in the file system (CVE-2020-8731); and a buffer overflow in daemon (CVE-2020-8707) — all three of which enable escalated privileges.

Oleksiuk was credited with reporting CVE-2020-8708, as well as CVE-2020-8706, CVE-2020-8707. All other CVEs were found internally by Intel.

Affected server systems include: The R1000WT and R2000WT families, R1000SP, LSVRP and LR1304SP families and R1000WF and R2000WF families.

Impacted motherboards include: The S2600WT family, S2600CW family, S2600KP family, S2600TP family, S1200SP family, S2600WF family, S2600ST family and S2600BP family.

Finally, impacted compute modules include: The HNS2600KP family, HNS2600TP family and HNS2600BP family. More information regarding patches is available in Intel’s security advisory.

Intel also issued an array of other security advisories addressing high-severity flaws across its product lines, including ones that affect Intel Graphics Drivers, Intel’s RAID web console 3 for Windows, Intel Server Board M10JNP2SB and Intel NUCs.

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