Asus patches high-severity BIOS vulnerability in 8th and 9th Gen Intel motherboards

Asus has issued a security bulletin recommending users update the BIOS on select motherboards for 8th and 9th Gen Intel chips. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-93495, allows a physically proximate user to read or write arbitrary memory by inserting a specially crafted device.

While the exploit requires someone to be in the same room as an affected PC, Asus assigned it a high severity score of 7.0 and strongly recommends updating to the latest BIOS version. The affected boards include several ROG Strix and ROG Maximus models designed for older Intel processors.

Users can download the relevant updates from the Asus support site. Asus provides a guide for updating BIOS in Windows on its website. The company also notes that users of Asus Armory Crate and similar software tools should check for recent updates, as another high severity security vulnerability in such tools was discovered in August.

BIOS updates can feel risky, but staying current with security patches remains important for system integrity and protection against potential exploits, even when local access is required.