Last week, someone announced leaking source code associated with the Alder Lake BIOS — Alder Lake is Intel’s codename for its 12th generation Core processors. The files total nearly 6 Gb and they were made public on GitHub and other websites.

Mark Ermolov, a security researcher who specializes in Intel products, analyzed the leaked code and reported finding a private signing key which, he claimed, meant the Intel Boot Guard feature, which is designed to protect the integrity of the boot process, could no longer be trusted.

Intel has confirmed the unauthorized disclosure of proprietary UEFI code and blamed the leak on an unnamed third-party.