Introduction
We have recently became aware of a chipset vulnerability impacting AMD chips. It allows even those without administrator privileges to read and dump memory pages in Windows. This can compromise passwords, and is a risk to users across the globe. ZeroPeril founder Kyriakos Economou disclosed this bug along with AMD. They were able to use the vulnerability to download sensitive data on a non-admin account.
Fix Available
The good news is, there is already a patch available for this vulnerability. You can download it as a part of AMD’s most recent chipset drivers, or via Windows Update. The patch has been out for multiple weeks. However, the global tech giant did not disclose the vulnerability until this time. It appears Ryzen 2000 and 3000 series chips are impacted, but Ryzen 1000 and older chips appeared on the official advisory from AMD.
AMD encourages users to update to AMD PSP driver 5.17.0.0 or to AMD Chipset Driver 3.08.17.735
Here are a list of affected AMD processors, courtesy of TomsHardware.
- 2nd Gen Ryzen Mobile Processor with Radeon Graphics
- 2nd Gen Ryzen Threadripper processor
- 3rd Gen Ryzen™ Threadripper™ Processors
- 6th Generation A series CPU with Radeon™ Graphics
- 6th Generation A-Series Mobile Processor
- 6th Generation FX APU with Radeon™ R7 Graphics
- 7th Generation A-Series APUs
- 7th Generation A-Series Mobile Processor
- 7th Generation E-Series Mobile Processor
- A4-Series APU with Radeon Graphics
- A6 APU with Radeon R5 Graphics
- A8 APU with Radeon R6 Graphics
- A10 APU with Radeon R6 Graphics
- 3000 Series Mobile Processors with Radeon™ Graphics
- Athlon 3000 Series Mobile Processors with Radeon™ Graphics
- Athlon Mobile Processors with Radeon™ Graphics
- Athlon X4 Processor
- Athlon™ 3000 Series Mobile Processors with Radeon™ Graphics
- Athlon™ X4 Processor
- E1-Series APU with Radeon Graphics
- Ryzen™ 1000 series Processor
- Ryzen™ 2000 series Desktop Processor
- Ryzen™ 2000 series Mobile Processor
- Ryzen™ 3000 Series Desktop Processor
- Ryzen™ 3000 series Mobile Processor with Radeon™ Graphics
- Ryzen™ 3000 series Mobile Processor
- Ryzen™ 4000 Series Desktop Processor with Radeon™ Graphics
- Ryzen™ 5000 Series Desktop Processor
- Ryzen™ 5000 Series Desktop Processor with Radeon™ Graphics
- Ryzen™ 5000 Series Mobile Processors with Radeon™ Graphics
- Ryzen™ Threadripper™ PRO Processor
- Ryzen™ Threadripper™ Processor
Conclusion
In the past, AMD has been known to be more secure than Intel chips due to less discovered vulnerabilities. This may however be a similar situation to Mac OS X vs Windows, where there are far more devices running Windows than the former and thus increased level of attacks.
If there are any further updates to this story we will publish them here, on our blog.
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