CTS-Labs, following up on Tuesday's "Masterkey" exploit proof-of-concept video, posted a guide to bypassing Windows Credential Guard on an AMD Ryzen-powered machine. We once again begin in a privileged shell session, of an AMD-powered machine whose Secure Processor that has been compromised using admin privileges, by exploiting it using any of the 13 vulnerabilities chronicled by CTS-Labs. Mimikatz, a tool that is used by hackers to steal network credentials, should normally not work on a machine with Windows Credential Guard enabled. Using a modified version of Mimikatz, the CTS-Labs researchers are able to bypass Windows Credential Guard (which relies on hardware-level security features present on the processor), leveraging the AMD Secure Processor malware microcode they wrote.The proof-of-concept video follows.

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.

A screenshot of what seems to be a higher core-count CPU from Intel has been doing the rounds, brought to us by the usual suspects. This supposedly marks the first appearance of Intel's new Coffee Lake-S processors, which should feature increased core-counts - gearing them towards stealing some of AMD's initiative. If you'll remember, the red team regained it in explosive fashion with their first generation Ryzen CPUs - and AMD is looking to double down on with the launch of their updated, 12 nm refresh Ryzen 2000 series just next month.

The new CPUs should be delivered alongside a new platform, Z390 - at the moment, a mirage that's been referenced here and there, but still has no concrete evidence towards its existence. However, it's expected that Z390 as a platform will be what Intel's Z370 was supposed to be from the very beginning - but never could. The idea that's been circulating, and which has some credit (though it should still be taken with a salty disposition), is that due to Intel's need to rush Coffee Lake out the door - so as not to compete against AMD's 8-core Zen-based CPUs with their usual cadre of 4-core, 8-thread processors - led the company to rush out the Z370 release. The idea for Z370 was simply for it to deliver, at all points in the minimum requirements, the correct power delivery hardware and mechanisms for the increased power draw that comes with the added cores. But it was, as such, absent of any real improvements - it can be interpreted, basically, as a re-branded Z270 chipset platform - and there's something to that claim, definitely. Thus Z390 will be the actual, originally planned platform for Intel's Coffee Lake CPUs, with all features - however fair that is for buyers of Intel's Z370.

QNAP Systems, Inc. today launched the cost-effective high-performance 4-bay (TS-473), 6-bay (TS-673), and 8-bay (TS-873) TS-x73 series NAS featuring an AMD RX-421ND quad-core CPU with Turbo Core up to 3.4GHz and two PCIe slots for installing a QNAP QM2 card, wireless network card or a graphics card to extend NAS functionalities. The TS-x73 series provides small and medium businesses with an ideal NAS solution to build a private cloud for applications including high-speed data transfer, backup/recovery, virtualization, media playback and graphics display.

The TS-x73 NAS series presents a budget-friendly solution by allowing users to add more value to their NAS based on their individual needs. Through the two PCIe slots, users can install a QNAP QM2 card to add SSD caching/10GbE connectivity for boosted performance; a wireless card with WirelessAP Station app to turn the NAS into a wireless access point; or even an PCIe bus-powered graphics card to enable 4K transcoding and HDMI output for a greater media multimedia experience," said Jason Hsu, Product Manager of QNAP.

AMD today released the latest version Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition. Version 18.3.3 beta is the third release for this month, and features a major API update, in addition to game optimization. The drivers introduce support for the Vulkan 1.1 API. In addition, the drivers provide optimization for "Sea of Thieves," and "A Way Out." An intermittent stuttering issue was fixed with "Forza Motorsport 7." A system hang seen on "Star Wars Battlefront 2," on multi-GPU systems, was fixed. Also fixed are flickering and objects disappearing from the scene, with "Final Fantasy XV."DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 18.3.3 Beta

The change-log follows.

Not sure whether intentional or an error, SiSoftware posted a review of the Ryzen 7 2700X and Ryzen 5 2600 processors on their website. The creators of the popular Sandra benchmark suite has taken down the review for the meantime. Luckily, our good old buddies at VideoCardz have ninja reflexes and downloaded the graphs before SiSoftware removed them. In their review, SiSoftware pitched the upcoming Ryzen 7 2700X and Ryzen 5 2600 processors against AMD's previous Ryzen 7 1700X processor and Intel's Core i7-6700K Skylake processor.

The SiSoftware team evaluated CPU performance using a plethora of synthetic benchmarks. Unfortunately, they didn't evaluate gaming performance. Nevertheless, their review gave us a taste of what we can expect from the Ryzen 2000 series. The Ryzen 2000 series (or Zen+) officially supports DDR4 frequencies up to 2933 MHz which should help improve its performance. Similar to its predecessor, Zen+ processors possess the most cores and threads. Therefore, performance improvements depend hugely on IPC and clock speeds. While we're on the subject of clock speeds, Ryzen 2000 series' base clock is 9% higher while the Turbo/Boost/XFR frequency is 11% higher when compared to previous Ryzen chips. In terms of CPU performance, we can expect at least a 10% improvement in CPU-heavy benchmarks. All of this comes at a cost though. The TDP for Zen+ (105W) is 11% higher than the first-generation Ryzen processors (95W). Beefy cooling solutions are highly recommended especially if you plan to overclock these CPUs. Although Zen+ based processors' L1, L2, and L3 caches suffered no changes, latencies should show some improvement. AMD may launch the Ryzen 2000 series on April 19, so we won't have to wait long to get our hands on the new processors.

Leaks surrounding motherboards based on AMD's upcoming X470 chipset, which will accompany its first-wave of Ryzen 2000-series "Pinnacle Ridge" processors, are on the rise. We now see a fairly clear picture of the retail packaging of ASUS Republic of Gamers (ROG) Crosshair VII Hero, specifically its "WiFi" sub-variant that includes a WLAN card. This board surfaced on benchmark database listings. There's no product image on the box, but the logos make things pretty cut and dry - AMD X470 chipset, socket AM4, support for NVIDIA SLI and AMD CrossFire; ASUS Aura Sync RGB LED management, and an unchanged Ryzen logo. We have confirmation of ASUS readying at least two ROG motherboards based on the X470 so far - the Crosshair VII Hero, and the Strix X470-F. It remains to be seen if the chipset also gets the company's coveted ROG "Extreme" treatment.

Hot on the heels of last week's possible ASUS ROG Strix X470 motherboard leak, the board layout drawings of at least three upcoming ASUS AMD X470 chipset motherboard models were leaked to the web. These drawings are typically part of the motherboards' user manuals. From these, we can make out that ASUS is using an identical PCB design for two products - the ROG Strix X470-F Gaming, and the Prime X470-PRO. The two have their I/O headers and ports at identical locations. ASUS will probably differentiate the two with different color schemes, heatsink designs, and a few ROG-exclusive software features on the Strix X470-F.

The third model is the TUF X470-PLUS Gaming. This product could be positioned a notch below the other two, it lacks one of the three PCI-Express x16 (electrical x4) slots, and uses Realtek-made gigabit Ethernet controllers, instead of Intel-made ones on the other two. The specs sheets of the Prime X470-PRO, which also appear to be sourced from the manuals, go into details of these specifications, most of which will be common with those of the ROG Strix X470-F. The specs sheet seems to suggest that the company's 2nd generation Ryzen "Pinnacle Ridge" processors support higher memory clocks.The specs sheets follow.

ASMedia Technology, a tech company that's best known for designing high speed controllers (most recently, USB 3.1 Gen2, and AMD's X370 chipset), has posted tremendous increases in revenue and profits. The Taiwanese company distributed cash dividends per share in the order of $0.21 in late 2017, after achieving revenues of roughly $102 million, up 44.7% YoY (Year over Year).

While ASMedia is one of the implied companies in the latest AMD nightmare (the suspiciously timed and apparently interest-driven CTS flaw disclosure), AMD is keeping with ASMedia for its X470 chipset design and production. Which was to be expected - even if AMD wanted to change partners or develop the chipset in-house, AMD's Ryzen 2000 series and the accompanying motherboards' release is impending. The company is expected to continue its strong growth on continued shipment of USB 3.1 controllers, adding USB 3.2 controllers to its portfolio, and increased profits derived from the development of AMD's X470 chipset.

In separate interviews with Vice Motherboard, Viceroy Research, the AMD stock short-seller that posted an obituary of AMD, and CTS-Labs, which claims AMD "Zen" architecture is infested with glaring security vulnerabilities; crystallized their financial positions on "AMD Flaws." CTS-Labs and Viceroy Research each went on record to state that they have no financial relationship with each other. "Viceroy [Research] is not a client of CTS[-Labs], and CTS[-Labs] did not send its research to Viceroy [Research]," said Yaron Luk, co-founder of CTS-Labs, but confirmed that his company's business-model involves sharing their cyber-security research with stock research firms (like Viceroy Research), which probably use the information to short tech stocks (a highly unethical though not yet illegal practice). "We are a for-profit company that gets paid for its research by a variety of research clients," Luk stated.

It's becoming increasingly clear that entities other than AMD had access to CTS-Labs' work, at least the report, if not the "research package," greater than 24 hours before public disclosure (i.e. before even AMD could see it), and one such entity, referred to as an "anonymous tipster" in the Motherboard report, "shared" the information with Viceroy Research, which quickly bought itself a shorting position against the AMD stock, and posted a 25-page doomsaying report to accelerate the fall of AMD stock (which isn't quite happening at the time of writing this post). Viceroy Research is brazen about its position on the matter. "We haven't hidden the fact that we short the stock," said Fraser Perring, founder of Viceroy. Cybersecurity guru Alex Stamos, who is associated with Facebook, without taking names, tweeted an ominous warning that short-selling fueled security research "is going to end in tears. Hopefully due to lost money, and not because naive researchers go to prison." Does this foretell new regulation by the SEC that renders Viceroy's position into a black-hole for their money? The SEC has taken a great interest in the behavior of tech corporations and investors around cyber-security research.

Cloudfest is a summit of sorts, a running line of conferences and announcements that focus on the cloud side of computing. With the increasing market value and demand of cloud services and providers, it's no surprise that industry behemoths are in attendance. AMD is one such, and it took the opportunity to throw a slight jab at Intel. Making the best it can from its long-coming favorable position in the server market, AMD put up a banner with an EPYC pun, touting its 3.3x performance per dollar advantage versus the Xeon competition... and then some. Just take a look at the image for yourself. It's all in good sport... Right?

ASRock was rumored to enter the graphics card market as per a report by DigiTimes. The motherboard and soon-to-be graphics card manufacturer just released a teaser on their Japan Twitter account that confirms this rumor. The mysterious graphics card in the video belongs to their Phantom Gaming Series. Although the exact model wasn't revealed, DigiTimes's article stated that it's probably an AMD Radeon-based card. From what can be seen from the 30-second long video, the graphics card features a dual-slot design with a black and white theme. The graphics card apparently relies on two fans to provide active cooling and a single 8-pin PCIe connector for power.

Yesterday, we had a very productive phone call with CTS-Labs, the firm behind the "AMD Flaws" critical security vulnerabilities exposé of the "Zen" microarchitecture. Our questions focus on the practicality of exploiting these vulnerabilities, and should provide more insight to the skepticism centered on needing admin privileges, flashing BIOS ROMs, and other localized hacks that would render any machine, not just "Zen" powered, vulnerable. Feel free to follow up with questions in the comments section, if we can help explain something.

Amazon Germany accidentally listed the upcoming AMD Ryzen 5 2600X six-core processor. According to the listing availability of the chip is scheduled for 19th April. The chip is priced at 248.93€ including taxes, which is in line with the launch SEP prices we saw in the leaked AMD press-deck posted earlier this month. The listing also mentions a handful specifications, such as the chip being based on 12 nm silicon fabrication process, and featuring clock speeds of 3.60 GHz, with 4.25 GHz turbo. Unlike with some of the higher end first-generation Ryzen retail packages, AMD will be including cooling solutions with all models of the 2nd generation Ryzen series. The Ryzen 5 2600X will include a Wraith Spire cooler, characterized by its RGB LED ring, and having a design focus on low-noise operation.

CTS-Labs the research group behind the AMD "Zen" CPU vulnerabilities, posted an addendum to its public-release of the whitepaper, in an attempt to dispel some of the criticism in their presentation in the absence of technical details (which they shared with AMD and other big tech firms). In their clarification whitepaper, quoted below, they get into slightly more technical details on each of the four vulnerability classes.

As we grow ever closer to the launch of AMD's 2000-series, details and scores are expected to be revealed in increasingly faster fashion. Today, some Geekbench benchmarks (reportedly) of an AMD 2700X CPU have appeared, shedding some light on the expected performance - and performance improvement - of the new AMD top-of-the-line CPU.

The Ryzen 7 2700X CPU that has been tested achieved scores of 4746 single core and 24772 multi-core, which show some interesting improvements over the original flagship Ryzen 7 1800X. The official Geekbench baseline scores for AMD's 1800X are 4249 and 21978, respectively, for single and multicore benchmarks. This means that the new 2700X, which is expected to carry an increased 100 MHz base (3.7 GHz vs 3.6 GHz) and 350 MHz higher boost (4.35 GHz vs 4.0 GHz) over the 1800X, is pulling some additional performance from some micro-architecture refinements, and not just from the added clockspeed. The mobo used, an ASUS ROG Crosshair VI Hero motherboard, is a X370-series chipset motherboard, so while it supports the new AMD CPUs, it might not fully support all their SenseMI Gen 2 improvements. From what can be gleaned, the Ryzen 7 2700X ran at its default base frequency of 3.7GHz, and the accompanying 16GB memory ran at 2.4GHz.

CTS Labs, the Israel-based IT security research company behind Tuesday's explosive AMD Ryzen security vulnerabilities report, responded to questions posed by TechPowerUp. One of the biggest of these, which is also on the minds of skeptics, is the ominous lack of proof-of-concept code or binaries being part of their initial public report (in contrast to the Meltdown/Spectre reports that went into technical details about the exploit). CTS Labs stated to TechPowerUp that it has sent AMD, along with other big tech companies a "complete research package," which includes "full technical write-ups about the vulnerabilities," "functional proof-of-concept exploit code," and "instructions on how to reproduce each vulnerability." It stated that besides AMD, the research package was sent to Microsoft, HP, Dell, Symantec, FireEye, and Cisco Systems, to help them develop patches and mitigation.

An unwritten yet generally accepted practice in the IT security industry upon discovery of such vulnerabilities, is for researchers to give companies in question at least 90 days to design a software patch, harden infrastructure, or implement other mitigation. 90 days is in stark contrast to the 24 hours AMD got from CTS Labs. CTS Labs confirmed to TechPowerUp that it indeed shared its research package with AMD (and the other companies) just 24 hours prior to making its report public, but urged those disgruntled with this decision to look at the situation objectively. "If you look at the situation in the following way: right now the public knows about the vulnerabilities and their implications, AMD is fully informed and developing patches, and major security companies are also informed and working on mitigation."

Security researchers with Israel-based CTS-Labs, have discovered a thirteen security vulnerabilities for systems based on AMD Zen processors. The thirteen new exploits are broadly classified into four groups based on the similarity in function of the processor that they exploit: "Ryzenfall," "Masterkey," "Fallout," and "Chimera."

The researchers "believe that networks that contain AMD computers are at a considerable risk," and that malware can "survive computer reboots and re-installations of the operating system, while remaining virtually undetectable by most endpoint security solutions," such as antivirus software. They also mention that in their opinion, "the basic nature of some of these vulnerabilities amounts to complete disregard of fundamental security principles. This raises concerning questions regarding security practices, auditing, and quality controls at AMD."

Yesterday AMD held their "One Year Ryzen Anniversary" call which reiterated the company's success introducing Ryzen products and also provided insight into what's planned for 2018 and beyond.

When asked about market share status and goals, Jim Anderson, SVP and GM of Computing and Graphics at AMD, mentioned that their near-term goal is reaching levels that the company enjoyed during their early-2000s market-leadership that they had thanks to the Athlon64 processors, which were strong competitors to what Intel offered at the time. Specifically, Jim said "I don't see any reason we can't get back to historical share levels that AMD has enjoyed in the past." Back in the 2000s the company boomed on a market share above 20% for desktop and slightly below 20% for notebook, also thanks to Intel's weakness in driving technology forward.

AMD today released Radeon Software Adrenalin 18.3.2 Beta, its second significant driver release for this month. These drivers include heavier optimization for "Final Fantasy XV." This includes up to 4 percent higher frame-rates at 1080p compared to the older 18.3.1 drivers, when tested with a Radeon RX Vega 64; and up to 7 percent higher frame-rates at the same resolution, when tested with the RX 580 8 GB. It also fixes a stuttering issue noticed in the game, when rendering scenes with heavy particle effects. Grab the drivers from the link below.DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 18.3.2 Beta

The change-log follows.

ASUS today rolled out the MG248QE, an entry-level 24-inch gaming monitor. This monitor misses out on the coveted Republic of Gamers (ROG) branding by ASUS, but is still targeted at gamers, albeit on a tight budget, owing to is sub-$300 pricing. Don't stop reading at Full HD (1920 x 1080 pixels) resolution just yet - you get 144 Hz refresh-rate, 1 ms (GTG) response time, and support for AMD FreeSync. Many of ASUS' GamePlus features are carried over from its ROG monitor lineup, such as GameVisual game genre-specific display presets, OSD crosshairs, timers, frame-rate counters, and monitor-based bezel-compensation adjustments for multi-monitor setups.

Other vital specs of the ASUS MG248QE include a TN-film panel with 16.7 million-colors, 170°/160° (V/H) maximum viewing-angles, LED backlit illuimation with low blue-light, 350 cd/m² maximum brightness, 100000000:1 "ASUS Smart Contrast Ratio," and passive anti-ghosting that takes advantage of the panel's high refresh-rate. Display inputs include HDMI 1.4a, DisplayPort 1.2a, and dual-link DVI. Since this monitor is succeeding the company's VG248QE with a slightly refreshed feature-set (FreeSync and low blue-light), we expect it to sell at a similar price-point $250-$280.

Continuing with its trend of leaking AMD slides, Spanish website Informatica Cero has now published some purported company slides leading up to AMD's 2020 strategy. New information concerns the appearance of a new, value-oriented mobile APU in the form of "Dali" - let's hope performance on that is slightly more predictable than the particular style of the artist whose name it follows. Dali therefore joins AMD's "Renoir" APU and "Vermeer" CPUs (both expected in the 7 nm process) for AMD's 2020 roadmap. This is an interesting product, which AMD is likely positioning for tablets and ultraportables.

Another interesting tidbit is AMD's outlook for their Threadripper line of HEDT CPUs. The company is looking towards its 7 nm rendition of these powerhouse chips, codenamed "Castle Peak", to bring them, in a literal way, to that figurative peak. AMD compares Threadripper to a Monster Truck of computing, and is apparently hoping to introduce Castle Peak as early as 2019. AMD then plans to further refine these "process inflection point" products in a new generation to come right after, in 2020 (much like the company has done now with Zen and Zen+).

Japanese cooling expert Scythe launches the 5th Generation of its legendary Ninja CPU Cooler Series. Scythe bundles the Ninja 5 with two Kaze Flex 120 PWM fans with the goal to offer a significantly more silent solution without compromising the high performance that users expect from the Ninja Series. This goal has been achieved by mounting the two fans using the Push/Push principle and setting the fan rotation limit to only 800 rpm. Outstanding RAM compatibility is assured even when used with LGA 2066 Mainboards with 8 RAM-Slots thanks to a new heatsink optimization. In addition to that, Ninja 5 is equipped with the third generation of the Hyper Precision Mounting System (H.P.M.S.) which further simplifies the installation procedure and supports all the major AMD and Intel sockets.

Ahead of its launch product roadmap of AMD's next-generation performance-thru-enthusiast segment socket AM4 processors, was leaked to the web. It indicates that AMD could launch its next-generation Ryzen 2000-series "Pinnacle Ridge" processors with no more than four SKUs initially. These include the top-dog Ryzen 7 2700X, followed by the Ryzen 7 2700; the Ryzen 5 2600X, and the Ryzen 5 2600. Both Ryzen 7-series SKUs are 8-core/16-thread chips, while both Ryzen 5-series SKUs are 6-core/12-thread. There's also pricing for each of the four. The clock-speeds are also revealed below.

The Ryzen 7 2700X is being launched at a SEP of USD $369, and positioned against Intel Core i7-8700K. This is followed by the Ryzen 7 2700 being priced at $299, and fielded against Intel's multiplier-locked Core i7-8700. The Ryzen 5 2600X is, obviously, positioned against the Core i5-8600K, and priced at $249; while the Ryzen 5 2600 is priced at an attractive $199, and looks to disrupt several of Intel's Core i5 6-core SKUs around its price-point. Unlike many of Intel's SKUs, all AMD Ryzen chips feature unlocked multiplier, SMT, and a cooling solution. That's right, even the top-dog 2700X and 2600X include coolers, as opposed to their predecessors. The 2700X includes AMD's new Wraith Prism, while the 2600X and the other two SKUs include a Wraith Spire.

Globalfoundries' Chief Technical Officer, Gary Patton, talked about the future he believes can be possible in future manufacturing processes, calling for particular attention towards the next step in the ladder at 7 nm. Apparently, the 7 nm process at Globalfoundries has received a shot in the arm from the integration of ex IBM engineering specialists (remember that IBM practically paid Globalfoundries to take its manufacturing division of its hands), and the company now expects better than foreseen technical specs and achievements of its 7 nm process.

While a move from 14 nm to 7 nm was expected to provide, at the very best, a halving in the actual size of a chip manufactured in 7 nm compared to 14 nm, Gary Patton is now saying that the are should actually be reduced by up to 2.7 times the original size. To put that into perspective, AMD's 1000 series processors on the Zeppelin die and 14 nm process, which come in at 213 mm² for the full, 8-core design, could be brought down to just 80 mm² instead. AMD could potentially use up that extra die space to either build in some overprovisioning, should the process still be in its infancy and yields need a small boost; or cram it with double the amount of cores and other architectural improvements, and still have chips that are smaller than the original Zen dies.