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Almost unfixable “Sinkclose” bug affects hundreds of millions of AMD chips (arstechnica.com)

submitted 3 months ago by return2ozma@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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[–] mox@lemmy.sdf.org 8 points 3 months ago (3 children)

anyone with that access can do a lot of damage anyway.

it’s just that there’s no remediation once the flaw has been exploited.

One of these things is not like the other.

[–] conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works 18 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Yeah, turning an exploit into one that survives a fresh install is a big deal.

[–] FierySpectre@lemmy.world -1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

It's always been a thing that the only way to completely be safe after malware is yeeting the old system and getting a new one...

And even then there have been actively exploited issues where the system gets re-infected when reloading the data from a backup. (My memory is a bit rusty on that one, but it was just data being restored, nothing that should install anything)

[–] conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 months ago

There has been a small element of risk, but it's low enough that this meaningfully increases it.

[–] Telorand@reddthat.com 15 points 3 months ago

They're intrinsically linked, in fact. If you have kernel access, you can do any number of things, including but not limited to persistent rootkits. I agree that this bug is one step further, since it affects the processor itself, but if somebody has ring 0 access that shouldn't, you already have problems.

[–] Shdwdrgn@mander.xyz 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Read it again, in context. What they said is perfectly valid.

[–] mox@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

No, it is misleading. An exploit with no remediation is not remotely comparable to a normal root exploit, which can be fixed with a simple OS reinstall.

Edit: And their follow-up comment, "if somebody has ring 0 access that shouldn’t, you already have problems," is dangerously misleading. While technically true that you would have a problem in both scenarios, presenting it that way is like telling someone not to worry about losing a leg because their sprained ankle is already a problem.