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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] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Okay, but I'm definitely certain that the majority of gamers running Windows 11 in secure boot mode with TPM 2.0 are running Zen 3 or 4. How many times can they cut their user-base in half before the people who are left leave because it's a dead game?