208
Researchers discover potentially catastrophic exploit present in AMD chips for decades
(www.engadget.com)
this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2024
208 points (82.9% liked)
Technology
59377 readers
5811 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I'm thinking there are more things like this, and maybe even some are intentionally put in to please government actors. Intels management engine is like a small computer inside the computer, and amd has something simular. This computer can work completely independent of what the main computer does and has network access.
Difference is that Intel's Management engine can be controlled via the network whereas AMD's platform security processor is local-only.
The much bigger problem is Microsoft's Pluton coprocessor, which they plan on making mandatory for using windows in the future.
I didn't know amd is local only, that's amazing. Another huge reason to go for amd.
And yeah, Pluton... I don't use windows anymore and I encourage everyone to switch to Linux. But only a few people care about their privacy and not being tracked.
It used to be a major pro-AMD reason for me too, but it's become irrelevant since pluton. Weird thing is, pluton was announced with much fanfare for Ryzen 6000, but I've not heard about it since.
Edit: I just read up on this topic again and found out that both purism and system76 disable the Intel ME in all their products (don't know if all of it is disabled, since it normally controls a lot of necessary components)
Edit 2: they can either remove most of its code from the flash, or use a disabling system that Intel had literally developed for the NSA.