Intel Wi-Fi has a trio of security flaws that need to be patched right away.
Intel also warns that Bluetooth has a problem.
Intel has just released a slew of updates to address vulnerabilities in its Wi-Fi adapters as well as a Bluetooth security vulnerability.
The risks were detailed in a trio of security advisories discovered by our sister site PC Gamer – see SA-00539 and SA-00582 for Wi-Fi and SA-00581 for Bluetooth – with the Wi-Fi concerns being the most significant.
The latter affects Intel Wi-Fi AX210, AX201, AX200, and Killer AX1675 plus AX1650 products, as well as older Wi-Fi 5 chipsets as listed in the above advisories, both Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E products (which will be present on contemporary Intel motherboards – and some AMD motherboards), as well as Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E products (which will be present on contemporary Intel motherboards – and some AMD
Now is the time to update your drivers.
Users can resolve these issues by obtaining the most recent driver version from Intel for their specific wireless adapter.
Type 'device management' into the taskbar's search box to see what wireless adapter you have, then click on it when it appears at the top under Best Match.
Look through the list of devices and select 'Network Adapters,' where you can see the name and model of your 'Intel Wireless Adapter.'
For Intel wireless devices, you can get the newest Windows 10 (and Windows 11) driver here, or for Killer network adapters, you can get the latest Intel Killer Performance Suite here.
Analysis: Fear of escalation, but with some limitations
The three most concerning security weaknesses here, all of which relate to Wi-Fi, are classed as 'high' in terms of severity by Intel, and they're sandwiched between a slew of'medium' flaws (there are 23 flaws in total).
The critical ones allow an attacker to acquire access to your system and potentially do bad things via 'adjacent access,' which means they can gain access to your machine and potentially do bad things if you're on the same network.
That means there won't be a problem if you're at home on your own network, but if you're using public Wi-Fi, a laptop with outdated wireless drivers could be vulnerable to attack — because you're sharing a network with other ('adjacent') users.
The single Bluetooth vulnerability is minor in nature, and it can only be used to launch a 'denial of service' assault, disrupting your system's operation but not doing anything genuinely evil like infecting it with malware. Of course, this isn't something you want to happen.
It's usually a good idea to keep your drivers up to date across all of your system's hardware, as well as keep up with frequent software updates.
