Security News > 2023 > January > MSI accidentally breaks Secure Boot for hundreds of motherboards
Over 290 MSI motherboards are reportedly affected by an insecure default UEFI Secure Boot setting settings that allows any operating system image to run regardless of whether it has a wrong or missing signature.
Secure Boot is a security feature built into the firmware of UEFI motherboards that ensures only trusted software can execute during the boot process.
To validate the safety of boot loaders, OS kernels, and other essential system components, Secure Boot checks the PKI that authenticates the software and determines its validity on every boot.
Potocki claims that MSI's firmware update version' 7C02v3C,' released on January 18, 2022, changed a default Secure Boot setting on MSI motherboards so that the system will boot even if it detects security violations.
As you can see from the image above, even though Secure Boot is enabled, it's 'Image Execution Policy' setting is set to 'Always Execute', allowing the system to boot even if there are security violations.
This effectively breaks the Secure Boot feature as untrusted images can still be used to boot the device.