An estimation says that about millions of Dell laptops and desktops have now been exposed to attacks by the hackers. A critical bug has been found in the SupportAssist software which is lead to a rapid increase in attacks. The SupportAssist software comes pre-installed on almost every Dell laptops and PCs.
If you don’t know what is SupportAssis then it is a software specially made for Dell systems for diagnosing the hardware and software of the computer system. It also notifies you if it finds any hardware not working properly or has got damaged. The bug in the SupportAssist app has been first detected by SafeBreach labs. Dell has also released a warning message for all the dell users to update their system as soon as possible.
According to SafeBreach, the vulnerability CVE-2019-12280 can allow all the hackers to get control over the machines and read all the information stored in the physical memory onboard. This bug has been found in the PC-Doctor component. SafeBreach also warns that this vulnerability can be exploited by the hackers to load an arbitrary unsigned DLL into a system service leading to escalation attack. About 100 million of Dell systems has been affected.
Dell users need not worry much because Dell has already released an update to fix the vulnerability found in the SupportAssist app. You just need to update your SupportAssist to fix this bug. This bug has been found in SupportAssist software for business and home edition PCs and laptops. In case the auto-update is enabled the SupportAssist app will get updated automatically when your system will get internet access.
You are highly advised to check that your SuportAssist app is updated to the latest version or nor to prevent any unwanted attack. The update is especially for SupportAssist for Business PCs version 2.0.1 and Home PCs version 3.2.2 and prior.
