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'You can now jailbreak your AMD CPU' — Google researchers release kit to exploit microcode vulnerability in Ryzen Zen 1 to Zen 4 chips (www.tomshardware.com)

submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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A team of Google researchers working with AMD recently discovered a major CPU exploit on Zen-based processors. The exploit allows anyone with local admin privileges to write and push custom microcode updates to affected CPUs. The same Google team has released the full deep-dive on the exploit, including how to write your own microcode. Anyone can now effectively jailbreak their own AMD CPUs.

The exploit affects all AMD CPUs using the Zen 1 to Zen 4 architectures. AMD released a BIOS patch plugging the exploit shortly after its discovery, but any of the above CPUs with a BIOS patch before 2024-12-17 will be vulnerable to the exploit. Though a malicious actor wishing to abuse this vulnerability needs an extremely high level of access to a system to exploit it, those concerned should update their or their organization's systems to the most recent BIOS update.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Any guesses how long it will take for someone to use this jailbreak to get Doom to run on just the CPU?
In theory, at least some of the affected processors should have more than enough cache to run it directly from there, right?

Though I have to admit that I don't understand CPU internals well enough to know if the microcode even has enough control over the chip to make that physically possible.