Intel's proprietary source code leaked, company confirms

Chip-maker Intel has reportedly confirmed that its 'Alder Lake BIOS' source code has been leaked by a third-party on anonymous imageboard website 4chan and Microsoft-owned open source developer platform Github, in a 6GB file containing tools and code for building and optimising 'BIOS/UEFI' images.

The working of the 'BIOS/UEFI' code of the computer is to initialise the hardware before the operating system has loaded, reports Tom's Hardware website.

The company said in a statement that "Our proprietary UEFI code appears to have been leaked by a third party".


"We do not believe this exposes any new security vulnerabilities as we do not rely on obfuscation of information as a security measure. This code is covered under our bug bounty programme within the Project Circuit Breaker campaign, and we encourage any researchers who may identify potential vulnerabilities to bring them our attention through this programme," a company spokesperson was quoted as saying.

Intel said it is reaching out to both customers and the security research community to keep them informed of this situation.

Meanwhile, Intel was yet to confirm who leaked the code.

Also, Intel said there shouldn't be any security related issues as it doesn't "rely on obfuscation of information as a security measure".

Moreover, Intel in its 'Project Circuit Breaker' bug bounty programme, encourages researchers to submit any vulnerabilities they find, which will award them an amount between $500 to $100,000 per bug, depending on the reported issue's severity.