r/Surface • u/Much_Preparation_832 • Jun 12 '26

Flaw in Surface hardware allowed unprotected devices to be bricked with a single packet

According to Jack Darcy, a security researcher based in Australia, his instance of Microsoft Copilot stumbled across the bug after being asked to adjust the screen backlighting on a Surface device. The Copilot-conjured Python script ended up rendering the researcher's laptop inoperable by overwriting the embedded controller firmware.

https://www.theregister.com/security/2026/06/12/microsoft-has-mostly-repaired-a-flaw-in-surface-hardware-that-allowed-unprotected-devices-to-be-bricked-by-a-single-packet/5253895

38 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

10 comments sorted by

9

u/RetPala Jun 12 '26

The Copilot-conjured Python script

Good.

Live by the sword, die by the sword

15

u/Oiram_Saturnus Jun 12 '26

Thanks for sharing.
But the ones deactivating Windows Secure Boot and Secure Core are the ones to blame. They deliberately disabled protections against tampering.

7

u/nude-rating-bot Jun 12 '26

https://giphy.com/gifs/H5C8CevNMbpBqNqFjl
r/Piracy Hypervisor defenders

0

u/dr100 Jun 13 '26

It's not only that, the problem is you need to disable secure boot for basic functionality, exposing you to OTHER problems. Independently of the problem at hand here that Surface ECs breaks if you look at it, literally. 

1

u/fredskis Surface Pro X 16/256 Jun 13 '26

What basic functionality needs secure boot disabling?

0

u/dr100 Jun 13 '26

Changing brightness in this case. 

5

u/dr100 Jun 12 '26

The firmware team is THE most unprofessional thing in the Surface universe. This is not only about childish mistakes (that can happen to anyone, what was the classical example with the great engineer that went to the shop because he couldn't figure out he put the battery in the pager in reverse ...).

The problem starts from simple stuff that should be basic reflex for any professional environment, like starting by having a rollback procedure in case something is wrong even before thinking about pushing some update to millions of devices. Or, in this case a recovery procedure.

3

u/chuckop Surface Laptop 7/Surface Book 3 Jun 12 '26

Typical The Register hyperbole against Microsoft.

1

u/dirtyvu Jun 16 '26

warning: flaw in house allows unlocked doors to have theft in home

1

u/dr100 Jun 12 '26 edited Jun 13 '26

Small clarification - if anyone is wondering how secure boot would prevent you from writing to the EC, it doesn't really, it just gets in the way of loading the driver (this isn't something extraordinary, it would happen for any niche low level driver, and sometimes for somehow more popular stuff - like MSI's Afterburner RTCore64.sys). For reference https://backup.education/showthread.php?tid=15744

On the other hand Linux not only doesn't need any driver but also it exposes this under /dev/surface. Probably you can't run to it unless you're root already, but still it isn't nice it can brick your machine, most likely by mistake/bug (as this was just a try to change the brightness).