Tuesday, March 20th 2018
Initial AMD Technical Assessment of CTS Labs Research
On March 12, 2018, AMD received a communication from CTS Labs regarding research into security vulnerabilities involving some AMD products. Less than 24 hours later, the research firm went public with its findings. Security and protecting users' data is of the utmost importance to us at AMD and we have worked rapidly to assess this security research and develop mitigation plans where needed. This is our first public update on this research, and will cover both our technical assessment of the issues as well as planned mitigation actions.
The security issues identified by the third-party researchers are not related to the AMD "Zen" CPU architecture or the Google Project Zero exploits made public Jan. 3, 2018. Instead, these issues are associated with the firmware managing the embedded security control processor in some of our products (AMD Secure Processor) and the chipset used in some socket AM4 and socket TR4 desktop platforms supporting AMD processors.
As described in more detail above, AMD has rapidly completed its assessment and is in the process of developing and staging the deployment of mitigations. It's important to note that all the issues raised in the research require administrative access to the system, a type of access that effectively grants the user unrestricted access to the system and the right to delete, create or modify any of the folders or files on the computer, as well as change any settings.
Any attacker gaining unauthorized administrative access would have a wide range of attacks at their disposal well beyond the exploits identified in this research. Further, all modern operating systems and enterprise-quality hypervisors today have many effective security controls, such as Microsoft Windows Credential Guard in the Windows environment, in place to prevent unauthorized administrative access that would need to be overcome in order to affect these security issues. A useful clarification of the difficulties associated with successfully exploiting these issues can be found in this posting from Trail of Bits, an independent security research firm who were contracted by the third-party researchers to verify their findings.
The security issues identified can be grouped into three major categories. The table above describes the categories, the AMD assessment of impact, and planned actions.
AMD will provide additional updates on both our analysis of these issues and the related mitigation plans in the coming weeks.
The security issues identified by the third-party researchers are not related to the AMD "Zen" CPU architecture or the Google Project Zero exploits made public Jan. 3, 2018. Instead, these issues are associated with the firmware managing the embedded security control processor in some of our products (AMD Secure Processor) and the chipset used in some socket AM4 and socket TR4 desktop platforms supporting AMD processors.
Any attacker gaining unauthorized administrative access would have a wide range of attacks at their disposal well beyond the exploits identified in this research. Further, all modern operating systems and enterprise-quality hypervisors today have many effective security controls, such as Microsoft Windows Credential Guard in the Windows environment, in place to prevent unauthorized administrative access that would need to be overcome in order to affect these security issues. A useful clarification of the difficulties associated with successfully exploiting these issues can be found in this posting from Trail of Bits, an independent security research firm who were contracted by the third-party researchers to verify their findings.
The security issues identified can be grouped into three major categories. The table above describes the categories, the AMD assessment of impact, and planned actions.
AMD will provide additional updates on both our analysis of these issues and the related mitigation plans in the coming weeks.
98 Comments on Initial AMD Technical Assessment of CTS Labs Research
What's curious to me is what happened to the ATI chipset? Did AMD cut them, with all of the layoffs that they had?
(Viceroy, NineWells & mentions of possible profit due to the "amdflaws" by CTS-Labs)
Every passing day has thusfar only proven this.
I find it odd no one mentioned the fact that the CEO (forgot the name already/unimportant now) of CTS (or is it Viceroy) just happens to be a legit fund manager gambling on AMD stock prices. Anyone who watched the video from GN would know that and stop arguing about why they did it as they did it.
Its from the disclaimer on amdflaws.
i think there are hundreds of "flaws" hard&soft from which we're not aware at every manufactures $soft developer
there are&will be smart people who understand how things works and can bypass any security without anyone's knowledge; for some is a question of prestige for other easy money
we'll be never safe unless we disconnect the internet; this not an option so we'll have to take risks and act accordingly to the infos we have and try to protect us as we can..
i understand cts and i don't blame them for releasing these infos because:
-there aren't any mandatory written regulation on how to proceed in matters like this; "general rules" or "gentleman's agreement" mean nothing
-they made money in every possible variant; being paid to do this research; selling the infos in advance for stock manipulation ... and who know maybe they sold the masterkey code already and nobody know ...
-self promotion as nobody heard of them
the only thing i don't like..they seems to have close connections with the israeli nsa equivalent so who knows what is their real goal....
"Good morning, and in case I don't see ya, good afternoon, good evening, and good night! " :)
safefirmware.com/CTS+comments+on+AMD+response+to+vulnerabilities.pdf
I should put links in my sig to things i need to refer back to in 'weeks' to see what happened.... :p. This is either going to validate the message (not the delivery or motives), or officially hang CTS, who by all accounts, has a noose already there. Some have have already kicked the chair out, others are waiting for a last minute stay of execution.
Not installing the drivers does not shield you on either side, you just make the OS even less aware of what the ME/PSP is doing.
This was in the news not too long ago. It's also never truly completely disabled, only more neutered. Some reading:
hothardware.com/news/researchers-figured-out-how-to-turn-off-intel-management-engine-11-thanks-to-nsa
Pretty sure China isn't the only one doing that.