May 14, 2021

Infosec research firm, SentinelLabs recently uncovered 12-year-old flaws in Dell’s firmware updater, DBUtil 2.3.

The research firm discovered five serious vulnerabilities in the vulnerable firmware updater, which has been installed by default on hundreds of millions of Dell systems since 2009.

Although it may not be a remote code execution vulnerability, meaning that a hacker cannot use it directly to compromise the user’s systems, it is still considered a major risk, since an attacker who receives an unprivileged shell through another vulnerability can use it to bypass security controls.

Since SentinelLabs notified the company in December 2020, Dell has provided documentation of the vulnerabilities and mitigation instructions, which mainly come down to “remove the utility.” The tech giant has also provided a replacement driver that should be installed automatically on all affected Dell systems at the next firmware update.

For more information, read the original story in Arstechnica.