Be Aware About these Six Unpatched SMM Vulnerabilities in HP Enterprise Devices

The Binarly security research team has published a report about six unpatched SMM vulnerabilities in HP Enterprise devices. According to the research team, these vulnerabilities can pose a severe threat to vulnerable devices if exploited. Attackers can abuse these vulnerabilities to implant malicious codes that enable attackers to maintain long-time persistence. Since these attacks occur at the firmware level, it’s been said that these types of attacks can easily evade OS-level security systems and survive reboots. 

All these SMM vulnerabilities are considered high in severity since they have got a score from 7.5 to 8.2 out of 10 in the CVSS scoring system. Owners of HP devices should be aware of these six unpatched SMM vulnerabilities in HO Enterprise devices. Since these vulnerabilities affect multiple HP products, including laptops, desktops, point-of-sale systems, and edge computing nodes, let’s see how to fix these six unpatched SMM vulnerabilities in HO Enterprise devices in this post.

Summary Of these Six Unpatched SMM Vulnerabilities in HP Enterprise Devices:

These vulnerabilities in HP BIOS let attackers, not just Implant persistent malware programs that survive operating system updates and re-installations but are also capable of bypassing UEFI Secure Boot, Intel Boot Guard, virtualization-based security, and endpoint security systems. Check out the page for more technical details.

HP Firmware Affected by These Vulnerabilities:

There are multiple firmware versions and devices affected by these SMM vulnerabilities, such as laptops, desktops, point-of-sale systems, and edge computing nodes. HP released advisories on Aug 9 and updated them on Aug 11 and Sep 7. Please visit the advisories for the latest updates. Please see the below table for the affected firmware versions.

How To Fix these Six Unpatched SMM Vulnerabilities in HP Enterprise Devices?

The best solution to cope with security vulnerabilities is to keep your system up to date with the latest firmware and software. Unfortunately, HP didn’t release patches for several models (at the time of publishing this post). We suggest you keep the advisories from time to time and patch the firmware as soon as released. 

As a general approach, it is good to enable System Guard Secure Launch and SMM protection on Windows running HP PCs. Please follow the Microsoft KB to see how to enable System Guard Secure Launch and SMM protection on Windows 10 and Windows 11 operating systems.

Now let’s see how to upgrade BIOS in HP Laptops.

How to Upgrade BIOS in HP Devices?

BIOS can be upgraded in four different ways. However, Upgrading the BIOS manually from Windows is the simplest and safe way. Please refer to this KB to know about the remaining procedure.

1. Update the BIOS using HP Image Assistant
2. Update the BIOS from within the BIOS
3. Update the BIOS manually from within Windows
3. Update the BIOS manually from a USB flash drive (outside of Windows)

Step 1. Collect the Product Name, Product Number, Processor Name, and System BIOS.

You can capture this information either from the HP System Utility or from Windows System Information.

To open HP System Utility: Press the fn and esc keys to open the HP System Information utility.
To Open Windows System Information: Type System Information in the taskbar search and hit the Enter key.

Step 2. Prepare your system for the BIOS upgrade.

1. Connect the Power card in the case of Laptops.
2. Close all the applications. No applications are supposed to be running during the BIOS update.
3. Disable the Anti-Virus, system security, and any other security application temporarily. In Windows, search for and open Security and Maintenance settings, and then click Security to access virus protection settings.
4. Disable BitLocker temporarily. In Windows, search for and open Manage Bitlocker. Click Suspend protection, and then click Yes.

Step 3. Download the BIOS update.

1. Open the HP Software and Driver Downloads page on your browser.
2. Choose your product. Or Let the tool auto-analyze your product.
3. Select BIOS and check for any available BIOS updates. Click Download. Note: If you don’t see BIOS updates, that means no updates are available for your product.

Step 4. Execute the BIOS update file.

Browse the file that you have downloaded. Execute it with a double-click on it.
Click Yes on the User Account Control screen.

Step 5. Click Next in the Installation Window.

Step 6. Accept the License Agreement.

Select I accept the terms in the license agreement, and then click Next.

Step 7. Click Next on the HP BIOS Update and Recovery window.

Step 8. Select Update, and then click Next.

Step 9. Restart after update.

Click Restart Now to install the update.

Step 10. Initiate BIOS update.

Click Apply Update Now on the HP BIOS Update window.

Step 11. Waite until the update process gets completed.

Step 12. Complete the BIOS update process and restart the computer.

Step 13. This completes the BIOS update process.

We hope this post would help you know about six unpatched SMM vulnerabilities in HP Enterprise devices. Thanks for reading this threat post. Please share this post and help to secure the digital world. Visit our social media page on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Telegram, Tumblr, Medium & Instagram, and subscribe to receive updates like this.