Out-Of-the-Box Exploitation Possible On PCs From Top 5 OEMs (arstechnica.com)

Posted by msmash on Wednesday June 1, 2016 @05:10AM from the security-woes dept.

According to a report published by two-factor authentication service Duo Security, third-party updating tools installed by Dell, HP, Lenovo, Acer, and Asus (the top five Windows PC OEMs) are exposing their devices to man-in-the-middle attacks. Dan Goodin, reports for Ars Technica: The updaters frequently expose their programming interfaces, making them easy to reverse engineer. Even worse, the updaters frequently fail to use transport layer security encryption properly, if at all. As a result, PCs from all five makers are vulnerable to exploits that allow attackers to install malware.Duo Security adds: Hacking in practice means taking the path of least resistance, and OEM software is often a weak link in the chain. All of the sexy exploit mitigations, desktop firewalls, and safe browsing enhancements can't protect you when an OEM vendor cripples them with pre-installed software.

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OEM Rescue Kit by Anonymous Coward · 2016-06-01 05:13 · Score: 5, Interesting

OEM Rescue Kit
Re: Hmm.... by Rosyna · 2016-06-01 05:49 · Score: 4, Interesting

A clean install may not work. There is a hook in Windows 8 and later that allows OEM firmware to supply a list of software to install after a clean install.
The feature was originally designed so Windows could automatically install necessary OEM-specific drivers without requiring a custom installer be used. Sadly, OEMs have used it to install vulnerable crapware.
You just can't win against crapware.