Motherboards from Gigabyte, MSI, ASUS, ASRock at risk from new UEFI flaw attack – here’s what we know

• UEFI flaw leaves ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI, and ASRock motherboards exposed to DMA attacks
• Firmware falsely reports IOMMU protection enabled, allowing malicious PCIe devices pre‑boot access
• Riot Games discovered issue; users should apply vendor firmware updates to mitigate risk

A vulnerability in the implementation of UEFI firmware has left many popular motherboards vulnerable to direct memory access (DMA) attacks, researchers have warned, with these attacks possibly resulting in stubbornly persistent access, exposure of encryption keys and credentials, and a myriad of other problems.

Most modern computers use UEFI firmware, low-level software built into the motherboard that initializes hardware and securely starts the operating system. Among other things, the firmware is responsible for initializing and correctly enabling the Input-Output Memory Management Unit (IOMMU) isolation layer.