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Just about every Windows and Linux device vulnerable to new LogoFAIL firmware attack
(arstechnica.com)
this post was submitted on 07 Dec 2023
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Can anyone explain to me if this is an actual risk outside a highly controlled environment? AFAIK, it's a pretty non-casual thing to change the UEFI boot logo, so wouldn't that make this pretty hard to actually pull off?
The article quoted the researchers who indicated it can be done with remote access by using other attack vectors. This is because most UEFI systems store the logo on disk in the EFI system partition. It doesn't need to do anything crazy like compile and flash a modified firmware. All it needs to do is overwrite the logo file on disk.
If it's on the disk, why doesn't the image get removed when I erase all partitions? Does the firmware put it back?
If I'm understanding this correctly this isn't necessarily the very first logo that would appear but one that appears as the firmware starts to boot an OS from the EFI system partition. So technically installing your OS puts the original non-malicious logo there.
It does, but if it has compromised the BIOS before that, that won't get wiped.