100M Dell PC Owners Warned of Decades Old Vulnerabilities, Security Update

Dell has reportedly released an update to address security vulnerabilities that have existed in hundreds of millions of PCs for more than a decade.

The update, released by the technology company Tuesday, addresses “high severity” security flaws in Dell PCs running Microsoft Windows, reports Forbes. The flaw could allow a hacker with access to the computer to gain almost total control and hundreds of millions of Dell PCs reportedly carry the problem.  

Multiple vulnerabilities were discovered by cybersecurity company SentinelLabs in December of 2020. The details of the security issues have not been fully disclosed, reports Forbes, in order to give Dell PC owners time to upload the update issued Tuesday.  

SentinelLabs says in its report that the security problems in Dell PCs have existed since 2009 and affect devices across the world.  

The security vulnerabilities are serious and may be spread among hundreds of millions of computers. The vulnerabilities can reportedly allow a hacker to completely lock down files in an affected Dell PC, destroy them, or install codes that allow them to secretly spy on activity.  

“These multiple high severity vulnerabilities in Dell software could allow attackers to escalate privileges from a non-administrator user to kernel mode privileges,” states cybersecurity firm SentinelLabs’ report. “Over the years, Dell has released BIOS update utilities which contain the vulnerable driver for hundreds of millions of computers (including desktops, laptops, notebooks, and tablets) worldwide.” 

The report says that there is no evidence that hackers have accessed the Dell PC security flaws SentinelLabs discovered yet.  

Both SentinelLabs and Dell urge PC owners to update their computers with the security patch the company released Tuesday.  

“While we haven’t seen any indicators that these vulnerabilities have been exploited in the wild up till now, with hundreds of million of enterprises and users currently vulnerable, it is inevitable that attackers will seek out those that do not take the appropriate action,” says the SentinelLabs report. “Our reason for publishing this research is to not only help our customers but also the community to understand the risk and to take action.” 

Indeed, millions of consumers may be affected by these reported vulnerabilities. Top Class Actions will continue to monitor this story for future developments.  

Do you own Dell PCs affected by the security update?  

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