Intel has released patches for several security vulnerabilities in their Active Management Technology (AMT) and Intel Standard Manageability (ISM) platforms. One of them was a critical flaw in AMT that allowed remote privilege escalation CVE-2020-8758
It is nice to see more Intel product vulnerabilities are being addressed, especially those that reside in embedded management functions for business class CPU products.
Compromising the hardware and firmware represent a serious threat to computing that can undermine all other security and monitoring controls that run on the system. Given the range of version numbers, I would guess these vulnerabilities have existed for years.
Properly investing in product security and standing by those products is crucial for trust.
Of note, those customers who have Intel systems with older versions of Intel AMT (3.x thru 10.x) are not supported by Intel any longer and weren’t assessed for these vulnerabilities. Intel’s product security website (https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/security-center/advisory/intel-sa-00404.html) states they are not planning any patch release for those versions. Customers are on their own to address those potentially Critical level vulnerabilities.
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