Vulnerabilities > CVE-2019-6156 - Improper Locking vulnerability in Lenovo products

047910
CVSS 2.1 - LOW
Attack vector
LOCAL
Attack complexity
LOW
Privileges required
NONE
Confidentiality impact
NONE
Integrity impact
PARTIAL
Availability impact
NONE
local
low complexity
lenovo
CWE-667

Summary

In Lenovo systems, SMM BIOS Write Protection is used to prevent writes to SPI Flash. While this provides sufficient protection, an additional layer of protection is provided by SPI Protected Range Registers (PRx). Lenovo was notified that after resuming from S3 sleep mode in various versions of BIOS for Lenovo systems, the PRx is not set. This does not impact the SMM BIOS Write Protection, which keeps systems protected.

Vulnerable Configurations

Part Description Count
OS
Lenovo
177
Hardware
Lenovo
177

Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE)

Common Attack Pattern Enumeration and Classification (CAPEC)

  • Leveraging Race Conditions
    This attack targets a race condition occurring when multiple processes access and manipulate the same resource concurrently and the outcome of the execution depends on the particular order in which the access takes place. The attacker can leverage a race condition by "running the race", modifying the resource and modifying the normal execution flow. For instance a race condition can occur while accessing a file, the attacker can trick the system by replacing the original file with his version and cause the system to read the malicious file.
  • Leveraging Race Conditions via Symbolic Links
    This attack leverages the use of symbolic links (Symlinks) in order to write to sensitive files. An attacker can create a Symlink link to a target file not otherwise accessible to her. When the privileged program tries to create a temporary file with the same name as the Symlink link, it will actually write to the target file pointed to by the attackers' Symlink link. If the attacker can insert malicious content in the temporary file she will be writing to the sensitive file by using the Symlink. The race occurs because the system checks if the temporary file exists, then creates the file. The attacker would typically create the Symlink during the interval between the check and the creation of the temporary file.