[saghm]

I have a similar model motherboard from ASUS in my desktop I had custom built a few years ago, and I've mostly just been annoyed that I have to have Windows installed to be able to even update the BIOS at all given that the previous one I had (which I think was also from them?) would just let me do it over ethernet if I booted directly into the BIOS setup menu. Now I have much larger concerns in addition to the risk of not updating as frequently seeming much larger...

[Arnavion]

Any mobo will let you download the firmware file to a FAT32-formatted USB drive etc, and then use that to update the UEFI within the UEFI UI.

Yes some mobos have the feature in their UEFI to connect to the internet and download the update, but it's best to not rely on that since you have no idea how securely that is implemented. Considering how the submitted article is about a shitty implementation in a regular Windows program, you can be sure the implementation in UEFI is even shittier (may not check certs, may not even use HTTPS, etc). Asrock used to have an "Internet Flash" feature in their UEFI and then suddenly removed it, probably because it was too insecure to fix.

[saghm]

> Considering how the submitted article is about a shitty implementation in a regular Windows program, you can be sure the implementation in UEFI is even shittier (may not check certs, may not even use HTTPS, etc)

I don't think it's fair to conflate the security of perpetually running daemon that allows arbitrary instructions from remote endpoints with a manual download that's only initiated in very specific circumstances. Yes, it would be bad not to check certs or use HTTPS, but I'm not sure I buy that this would be "too insecure to fix" compared to trying to allow something to remotely push updates that I never asked for. You don't have to accept that my threat model where I've decided that I'm willing to risk one manually-initiated request that might be somewhat unsafe every few months or so is worth it, but I don't see how you can argue that it's somehow _more_ dangerous than the version that runs continuously at all times and doesn't require any input from me.