Security Alert: NUCs Vulnerable to SMM Exploit

Intel has released on Monday a security advisory regarding a flaw in the Intel NUC BIOS. This flaw allows a user with local administrative right to access the system management mode (SMM) and take full control of the platform. All Skylake, Broadwell, Braswell NUCs are affected. In other words pretty much all NUCs from 2015 and 2016 are vulnerable to this.

The issue has been fixed in the BIOS versions that were released earlier in September. The following lists the first version that contains the fix for this issue.

  • Skylake (i3 and i5): 0051
  • Skull Canyon (i7): 0041
  • Broadwell (i3, i5 and i7): 0359
  • Braswell (Pentium and Celeron): 0056

Intel highly recommends updating the BIOS to a version listed above or newer. Check out Latest BIOS page for direct links to the latest BIOS versions.

We originally found out about this from fanlesstech.com.

4 Responses

  1. e says:

    FWIW, the n2820 Bay Trail NUC bios was also updates, with one of the changes being security enhancements.

  2. Pawel says:

    Thanks. Will be updating all units tonight.

  3. Leon Waksman says:

    Use Bios 0052 for update NUC6i5. This update together with the last cumulative update for Windows 10 KB3194496 ( build – 14393.222) fixes also problem with the SD card. With the both updates (Bios 0052 and Windows update) the SD card is always detected.

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