Schools Struggling to Stay Open Get Hit by Ransomware Attacks
www.wsj.com/articles/my-information-is-out-there-hackers-escalate-ransomware-attacks-on-schools-11605279160?mod=djemalertNEWS Districts around the U.S. are fighting a wave of increasingly aggressive hackers, who are publicly posting sensitive student information. Based on searches of hackers’ sites on the dark weba network of websites accessed through special software that gives users anonymityas well as publicly known cases, the Journal has documented nearly three dozen ransomware attacks against school districts since the pandemic began in March. That tally, affecting districts educating more than 700, 000 students, doesn’t include numerous private schools, community colleges and universities that have also come under attack.
Stick a fork in SGX, it’s done: Intel’s cloud-server security defeated by $30 chip and electrical shenanigans
www.theregister.com/2020/11/14/intel_sgx_protection_broken/ Boffins at the University of Birmingham in the UK have developed yet another way to compromise the confidentiality of Intel’s Software Guard Extensions (SGX) secure enclaves, supposed “safe rooms” for sensitive computation. Their technique, named VoltPillager in the tradition of dramatic bug branding, works on SGX systems, even those that have received Intel’s Plundervolt patch (CVE-2019-11157). It involves injecting messages on the Serial Voltage Identification bus between the CPU and the voltage regulator in order to control the voltage in the CPU core.
Hackers can use just-fixed Intel bugs to install malicious firmware on PCs
arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/11/intel-patches-high-severity-bugs-protecting-lost-stolen-or-confiscated-pcs/ Earlier this week, Intel fixed a series of bugs that made it possible for attackers to install malicious firmware on millions of computers that use its CPUs. The vulnerabilities allowed hackers with physical access to override a protection Intel built into modern CPUs that prevents unauthorized firmware from running during the boot process. Known as Boot Guard, the measure is designed to anchor a chain of trust directly into the silicon to ensure that all firmware that loads is digitally signed by the computer manufacturer. Since CVE-2020-8705 requires physical access, it is harder for an attacker to use than a remote exploit. However, there are a few realistic attack scenarios where it could be used.
