Amd and Intel's security flaws and security vulnerabilities. The chosen one ISN'T BETTER THAN THE OTHER.

[Papusan]

AMD And Intel CPUs Rocked By New Speculative Execution Attack With A Huge Performance Hit

Do you remember a few years ago when everyone panicked over a couple of security flaws known as Meltdown and Spectre? These were a new type of security hole altogether, known as speculative execution flaws because they exploit the so-named capability of modern processors. That was back in 2018, and since then, every tech company under the sun has issued patches, firmware updates, and other guidance to mitigate the danger of these attacks.

 

So that's all over and dealt with, right? Well... not exactly. As it turns out, one of the major mitigations deployed against Spectre, known as "retpoline", isn't actually as helpful as we thought. A new flaw, known as "retbleed", has been discovered by researchers at ETH Zurich. Retbleed evades earlier protections against a specific form of the Spectre vulnerability, including machines using the retpoline mitigation..

 

Both AMD and Intel say that they're not aware of anyone making use of these vulnerabilities in the wild, but patches aren't available yet. When they do become available, they may come with a performance hit of as much as 28%. Hopefully some clever coders will come up with a way to mitigate that performance loss.

 

Microsoft try push you over on new hardware so you can enjoy their latest and most secure OS. Same do the HW manufacturers. They know they later have to patch flaws they have added to try optimize for better performance. Give with one hand and then take it back with the other hands. Or just hope you buy their newest and safer products that will suffer same mess after a couple of years. Why not just stop optimize for performance when you know you have to take it back later?

[Ishayin]

Meh... I rather agree with the sentiments expressed in this article:
https://www.extremetech.com/computing/337005-researchers-found-an-unpatchable-security-flaw-in-apples-m1-and-you-probably-dont-need-to-care

 

The amount of energy and drama expended seems out of proportion to the actual risks, and mainly only serves to keep IT professionals and tech writers employed as far as I can see. How many people do you know who have been impacted by any of these things? Over the entirety of the past decade, I know one person who got a minor virus, one person who was targeted by a social hack with no ill-results, and two people who have had their WhatsApp accounts hacked (and well, if you're still using WhatsApp, lol...). Social engineering is by far the most common form of attack these days, and renders most of the underlying technical issues completely moot.

[jaybee83]

2 hours ago, Ishatix said:

Meh... I rather agree with the sentiments expressed in this article:
https://www.extremetech.com/computing/337005-researchers-found-an-unpatchable-security-flaw-in-apples-m1-and-you-probably-dont-need-to-care

 

The amount of energy and drama expended seems out of proportion to the actual risks, and mainly only serves to keep IT professionals and tech writers employed as far as I can see. How many people do you know who have been impacted by any of these things? Over the entirety of the past decade, I know one person who got a minor virus, one person who was targeted by a social hack with no ill-results, and two people who have had their WhatsApp accounts hacked (and well, if you're still using WhatsApp, lol...). Social engineering is by far the most common form of attack these days, and renders most of the underlying technical issues completely moot.

true, drama sells clicks n views. but still, better to be aware than be caught off guard.

[Papusan]

It seem AMD collect vulnerabilities and prefer push out patches after they have released new products. This time patched only 31 vulnerabilities 🙂

 

AMD Discloses 31 New CPU Vulnerabilities, Issues Patch Guidance tomshardware.com

And yes, Intel follows the same path. But stop the talk about who is best in the class. They are both equal dishonest and both have to implement vulnerabilities to make their products to show better perfomance. Then they have to fix their own created mess with patches after they have been discovered with the panths down. This is classic. Give something with the left hand then backtack it later with the right hand. They should stop implement code to show their products in better lights. 

 

On 7/26/2022 at 10:45 PM, jaybee83 said:

true, drama sells clicks n views.

Not always😎 AMD try avoid drama. Drama can reduce sales😎 They usually hide what is patched in newer firmware. And they don't patch before they have to.

 

"AMD quietly divulged 31 new CPU vulnerabilities" in a January update, spanning its Ryzen chips for consumers and the EPYC data center processors. The vulnerability update also includes a list of AGESA versions, with mitigations for the impacted processors. 

 

Quetly fix the vulnerabilities then throw it out. The end results will sometimes end as this.. Angry owners of their modern HW.

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