Dell just patched a driver security flaw dating from 2009
Dell has released a patch that addresses multiple vulnerabilities in its DBUtil BIOS driver after a security researcher found that the driver in question could be abused by an attacker to gain increased system privileges.
The vulnerable driver was first discovered by security research Kasif Dekel from SentinelLabs and the team informed the PC giant of its findings back in December of last year. According to the US-based cybersecurity firm, the driver has been vulnerable since 2009 though there is no evidence at this time that its flaws have been exploited in the wild.
The DBUtil BIOS driver comes pre-installed on many Dell laptops and desktops running Windows and is responsible for Dell Firmware Updates via the Dell BIOS Utility. It is estimated that hundreds of millions of devices from the company received the vulnerable driver through BIOS updates.