Broadcom Corp. (Nasdaq: BRCM) is the latest WiFi vendor to have its security cast into doubt, with the discovery of a potential flaw by one of the researchers that showed off a now-notorious hack against
Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL)'s Macbook recently. (See
Users Eye New 802.11 Security Issues ,
Apple's Core Is Secure, and
Apple Issues Security Alert.)
Jon Jon Ellch, aka Johnny Cache, has now
reported a WiFi driver vulnerability to chipmaker Broadcom that could allow malicious types to take over a user's computers. The Broadcom driver BCMWL5.SYS version 3.50.21.10 driver ships with PCs from
Dell Technologies (Nasdaq: DELL),
HP Inc. (NYSE: HPQ), and other major computer makers.
"Broadcom has released a fixed driver to their partners, which are in turn providing updates for the affected products," notes Ellch in his bug report. So far, however, only
Linksys has issued a patch.
Security house
Secunia is calling the security "moderately critical" and suggests that users switch off their WiFi radios when not in use.
Broadcom is by no means the only vendor to have faced firmware-level WiFi security issues recently. Aside from Apple's patches,
Intel Corp. (Nasdaq: INTC) also had to warn about a driver vulnerability back in August. (See
Intel's Centrino Vulnerability.)
— Dan Jones, Site Editor,
Unstrung
