MSI breach-related Intel Boot Guard private key leak under investigation

Intel has launched a probe into the leak of Intel Boot Guard private keys exposed by the Money Message extortion gang following its hack of Taiwanese PC hardware manufacturer MSI in March, according to BleepingComputer. Money Message has been noted by Binarly CEO Alex Matrosov to have exposed MSI source code with Intel Boot Guard private keys for 166 MSI offerings, as well as image signing private keys for 57 products, but Intel noted that the leaked signing keys were not from the company but produced by the system manufacturer. Such a leak may have hindered Intel Boot Guard functionality across MSI devices with 11th-gen to 13th-gen CPUs, and affected the entire Intel ecosystem, noted Matrosov. "The leaked private parts of the mentioned keys allow a potential attacker to sign the modified firmware for this device, so it would pass Intel Boot Guard's verification making this technology completely ineffective," said Binarly.