Lenovo Laptops BIOS Vulnerability

Tracked as CVE-2021-3452 and affecting tens of ThinkPad models, the first of the bugs impacts the system shutdown SMI callback function and could be abused by a local attacker that already has elevated privileges on the device to execute arbitrary code.

Five other ThinkPad models that are not affected by this vulnerability are impacted by CVE-2021-3453, a security hole that exists because BIOS modules are not protected by Intel Boot Guard, meaning that an attacker with physical access to the affected devices could write to the SPI flash storage.

Lenovo says it has already released BIOS updates for the affected ThinkPad devices, but that it is still working to release patches for 13 impacted notebook models. The security flaw also affects two ideacentre desktop models, which are expected to receive patches on September 30.

Tracked as CVE-2021-3614, the third of the vulnerabilities affects Lenovo notebook models only and could allow “an attacker with physical access to elevate privileges under certain conditions during a BIOS update performed by Lenovo Vantage,”.

A total of 21 notebook models are impacted, but patches have been released for only two of them. While BIOS updates for a third model should arrive this week, Lenovo hasn’t provided an estimated release date for the rest of the affected devices.