Security News
AMD alone dropped 50 new CVEs on Thursday, 23 of them rated of "High" concern, meaning they're rated at between 7.0 and 8.9 on the the-point Common Vulnerability Scoring System. Let's start with the 27 flaws in the AMD Graphics Driver for Windows 10 - 18 of them rated High - because at least they're in software and Microsoft and Adobe's patch issuance cadence means readers could be in the mood to fix code.
AMD has fixed a long list of security vulnerabilities found in its graphics driver for Windows 10 devices, allowing attackers to execute arbitrary code and elevate privileges on vulnerable systems. "In a comprehensive analysis of the AMD Escape calls, a potential set of weaknesses in several APIs was discovered, which could result in escalation of privilege, denial of service, information disclosure, KASLR bypass, or arbitrary write to kernel memory," AMD explained.
AMD says it observed performance hits of up to 15% on Windows 11-compatible AMD processors when using some applications. Microsoft and AMD are investigating two separate issues affecting AMD CPUs' performance on Windows 11.
Cybercriminals are making strides towards attacks with malware that can execute code from the graphics processing unit of a compromised system. In a short post on a hacker forum, someone offered to sell the proof-of-concept for a technique they say keeps malicious code safe from security solutions scanning the system RAM. The seller provided only an overview of their method, saying that it uses the GPU memory buffer to store malicious code and execute code.
Boffins find if you torture AMD Zen+, Zen 2 CPUs enough, they are vulnerable to Meltdown-like attack
Computer scientists at TU Dresden in Germany have found that AMD's Zen processor family is vulnerable to a data-bothering Meltdown-like attack after all. In a paper [PDF] titled "Transient Execution of Non-Canonical Accesses," released via ArXiv, Saidgani Musaev and Christof Fetzer analyzed AMD Zen+ and Zen 2 chips - namely the Epyc 7262, Ryzen 7 2700X, and the Threadripper 2990WX - and found that they were able to adversely manipulate the operation of the CPU cores.
Microsoft announced today that after investigating other potentially compatible processors for Windows 11, they only found one 7th generation Intel CPU to be compatible, and no first generation AMD Zen CPUs. With the new TPM 2.0 requirement and a restricted list of compatible CPUs, many people found that their devices with Intel 7th generation and first generation AMD Zen CPUs, which run Windows 10 flawlessly, can no longer upgrade to Windows 11.
Microsoft announced today that after investigating other potentially compatible processors for Windows 11, they only found one 7th generation Intel CPU to be compatible, and no AMD Zen CPUs. With the new TPM 2.0 requirement and a restricted list of compatible CPUs, many people found that their devices with Intel 7th generation and AMD Zen CPUs, which run Windows 10 flawlessly, cab no longer upgrade to Windows 11.
Researchers have described a voltage glitching attack that shows AMD's Secure Encrypted Virtualization technology may not provide proper protection for confidential data in cloud environments. The TU Berlin researchers showed that an attacker who has physical access to the targeted system can gain access to SEV-protected VM memory content by launching a voltage fault injection attack on SP. In order to work as intended, integrated circuits need to operate within specific temperature, clock stability, electromagnetic field, and supply voltage ranges.
AMD's Secure Encrypted Virtualization scheme is not as secure as its name suggests. In a paper titled "One Glitch to Rule Them All: Fault Injection Attacks Against AMD's Secure Encrypted Virtualization," Robert Buhren, Hans Niklas Jacob, Thilo Krachenfels, and Jean-Pierre Seifert from TU Berlin's Security in Telecommunications group, describe how they succeeded in mounting a voltage fault injection attack.
Microsoft announced today that they might lower the Windows 11 system requirements to allow Intel 7th generation and AMD Zen 1 CPUs to use the new operating system. Even if your hardware had no problems running Windows 10, Microsoft decided only to allow Intel 8th generation, AMD Zen 2, and Qualcomm 7 and 8 Series processors to be compatible with Windows 11.