BlackLotus
BlackLotus (canonical bootkit naming per ESET March 1, 2023 WeLiveSecurity canonical disclosure by Martin Smolár "BlackLotus UEFI Bootkit: Myth Confirmed") is a commercial UEFI bootkit, operationally significant as the first publicly-known UEFI bootkit bypassing UEFI Secure Boot on fully-patched Windows 11 systems + the first commercial UEFI bootkit category cluster in publicly-tracked UEFI bootkit ecosystem (operationally distinct from sibling nation-state-attributed UEFI bootkit clusters CosmicStrand + MosaicRegressor + MoonBounce all curated separately, through commercial dark-web sales business model, sold on underground hacking forums since at least October 2022 at $5,000 base price plus $200 per new subsequent version per ESET + Sergey Lozhkin Kaspersky October 2022 identification)
signature CVE-2022-21894 Baton Drop Secure Boot Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability exploitation (cluster-defining exploit chain, Microsoft patched January 2022 Patch Tuesday but affected validly-signed binaries not added to UEFI revocation list, operationally enabling BlackLotus to bring own copies of legitimate-but-vulnerable signed binaries via Bring Your Own Vulnerable Driver (BYOVD) approach + signature vulnerable signed boot manager rollback mechanism)
signature Machine Owner Key (MOK) enrollment persistence (writes own MOK to MokList Boot-services-only NVRAM variable, uses legitimate Microsoft-signed shim for loading self- signed UEFI bootkit instead of exploiting vulnerability on every boot)
signature OS security mechanisms disablement capability (BitLocker + HVCI Hypervisor- protected Code Integrity + Windows Defender disablement per ESET + Microsoft + Intel 471)
compact 80KB Assembly + C implementation with anti-removal Ring0/ Kernel protection + ESP file handle protection + BSOD trigger on handle close attempts + anti-VM + anti-debug + code obfuscation analysis-evasion features per ESET; EFI System Partition (ESP) deployment + privileged/ physical access deployment requirement (not initial access vector, operationally complements other vectors as persistence + defense-evasion mechanism per Microsoft)
HTTP downloader user-mode payload + kernel driver post-exploitation infrastructure with HTTPS C2 communication + downloading additional kernel drivers/ DLLs/executables + fetching bootkit updates + uninstalling bootkit capability.
signature post-Soviet geofencing operator OPSEC tradecraft (avoids Armenia + Belarus + Kazakhstan + Moldova + Romania + Russia + Ukraine, operationally suggesting Russian-speaking developer operational security considerations); Microsoft canonical April 11, 2023 investigation guidance + Microsoft CVE-2023-24932 May 2023 follow-on revocation patch addressing BYOVD vulnerable boot manager rollback + NSA canonical BlackLotus Mitigation Guide June 22, 2023 (CSI U/OO/167397-23) + Microsoft Secure Boot trust anchor DBX update wave April 2024+ multi-year remediation effort.
per Eclypsium Scott Scheferman: BlackLotus "represents a significant advancement in terms of ease of use, scalability, accessibility, and potential impact in terms of persistence, evasion, and destruction" operationally enabling non-nation-state-tier cybercriminals to acquire UEFI bootkit capability at $5K price point, fundamentally lowering barriers to UEFI bootkit deployment that previously required state-actor-tier capability investment.
fills the 4th UEFI/firmware bootkit cell in the curated corpus following CosmicStrand (1st) + MosaicRegressor (2nd) + MoonBounce (3rd), operationally significant as the canonical "first publicly-known UEFI bootkit bypassing Secure Boot on fully-patched Windows 11" industry reference point + first commercial UEFI bootkit category baseline.
ongoing dark-web availability through 2022-2026 period despite Microsoft + NSA mitigation efforts illustrates UEFI bootkit patch-deployment lag vulnerability windows that persist even after sophisticated mitigation engineering by vendor + government partners.