Security News > 2023 > May > Intel investigating leak of Intel Boot Guard private keys after MSI breach
Intel is investigating the leak of alleged private keys used by the Intel Boot Guard security feature, potentially impacting its ability to block the installation of malicious UEFI firmware on MSI devices.
On Friday, Alex Matrosov, the CEO of firmware supply chain security platform Binarly, warned that the leaked source code contains the image signing private keys for 57 MSI products and Intel Boot Guard private keys for 116 MSI products.
"Intel is aware of these reports and actively investigating. There have been researcher claims that private signing keys are included in the data including MSI OEM Signing Keys for Intel® BootGuard," Intel told BleepingComputer in response to our questions about the leak.
To protect against malicious firmware, Intel Boot Guard will verify if a firmware image is signed using a legitimate private signing key using an embedded public key built into the Intel hardware.
"The Manifest and Boot Policy Manifest private keys were found in the leaked MSI source code. These keys are used for Boot Guard technology which provides firmware image verification with a hardware Root of Trust," warns Binarly in an advisory shared on Twitter.
Binarly has released a list of impacted MSI hardware, comprising 116 MSI devices reportedly compromised by the leaked Intel Boot Guard keys.