AI-powered discovery changes the cybersecurity landscape: Microsoft’s Security Copilot tool significantly accelerated the vulnerability identification process, with a particular focus on filesystem implementations due to their high vulnerability potential.”Using Security Copilot, we were able to identify potential security issues in bootloader functionalities, focusing on filesystems due to their high vulnerability potential,” the blog stated. “This approach saved our team approximately a week’s worth of time that would have otherwise been spent manually reviewing the content.”Through carefully crafted prompts, Security Copilot helped uncover an exploitable integer overflow vulnerability and assisted in finding similar vulnerability patterns across multiple files.”We’re sharing this research as an example of the increased efficiency, streamlined workflows, and improved capabilities that AI solutions like Security Copilot can deliver for defenders, security researchers, and SOC analysts,” the blog noted.”The major shift we’re seeing is from a traditional responsible disclosure approach to something quite different,” said Sunil Varkey, advisor at Beagle Security. “When AI starts discovering vulnerabilities at this accelerated pace, we’ll likely see many more zero-days in the wild.”Varkey pointed to an emerging scenario he calls “a weird state where all parties, both defenders and attackers, know about vulnerabilities simultaneously. It’s like the Wild West waiting to see who shoots first, while many defenders haven’t prepared for this speed of discovery.””AI can analyze large codebases, detect memory handling patterns, and suggest fixes at speeds that far outstrip manual analysis,” Kaur added. “While defenders benefit from improved response times, attackers are also leveraging AI”, creating a continuous arms race where both sides use these technologies to tip the balance.”As AI tools become increasingly essential for both attackers and defenders, Microsoft emphasized that information sharing among security vendors and researchers remains crucial to maintaining security advantages.”For decades, the cybersecurity battlefield has been asymmetrical,” Gogia pointed out. “Attackers had time, creativity, and zero red tape. Defenders? Overworked, reactive, and drowning in alerts. But AI is changing that calculus.”
Implications for enterprise security: For enterprise security teams, these discoveries highlight the importance of maintaining up-to-date firmware and bootloaders, areas often overlooked in regular patch management processes. Organizations should review their vulnerability management programs to ensure they adequately address these components.The vulnerabilities also underscore the ongoing risks associated with supply chain security, as many organizations may be using these bootloaders without being directly aware of the underlying components.Security experts recommend organizations inventory affected systems, prioritize applying the February 2025 security updates, implement monitoring for exploitation attempts, and review firmware update processes to ensure bootloaders are included in regular security maintenance.”Organizations should develop policies that explicitly address firmware and bootloader updates, maintain hardware inventories noting which systems use affected bootloaders, and incorporate these lower-level components into existing patch management cycles,” Kaur suggested.According to Varkey, addressing bootloader vulnerabilities presents unique challenges. “While it is critical to mitigate such vulnerabilities at the firmware level, it’s always a serious challenge. Mitigation patches may not be available in most cases, and their release highly depends on OEM vendors prioritizing them, similar to challenges with OT devices and other firmware.” “Many publicly known vulnerabilities are never acknowledged or patched by vendors,” Varkey noted. “The only option in such scenarios is to protect at the perimeter or the access control level.”
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