Code-Execution Flaw In UEFI Firmware Threatens Most Servers On Planet Earth

Ars Technica's Dan Goodin reports: Defenders across the world face the burden of responding to yet another botched code-execution vulnerability, this time in boot-time firmware used by most of the world's server vendors and data centers. The vulnerability, with a severity rating of 9.5 out of 10, resides in the TianoCore EDK II, an open source codebase that hardware makers and cloud providers use to create the UEFI firmware that runs during the boot-up sequence. Last year, a representative of the UEFI Forum called (PDF) EDK2 the "preeminent solution / implementation of the UEFI specifications." Virtually all UEFI suppliers (sometimes still called IBVs or independent BIOS vendors), including AMI, Insyde, and Phoenix, use the reference code extensively. Project Mu, Microsoft's hardened EDK2 fork, used the code containing the vulnerable component as well.