David89

Other researchers without any financial gain, i.e. not paid to review and not given guidance on how to use the exploits have questioned the validity of these vulnerabilities or have pointed out that the level of access and the steps used are not specific to AMD. In other words while the exact specific things they are doing are for AMD platforms they can be done on any system if you have those privileges, comments were also made that some of the vulnerabilities are not vulnerabilities and are only a direct result of having the requisite privileged access.
 
When you're flashing things like the bios or platform security engine firmware (PSP or IME), which you need to be able to do to update them at all, then is it really a vulnerability or just malicious firmware being loaded on to the system thereby making it vulnerable.
 
So you have security researchers with decent credibility, ones who discovered Meltdown and Spectre, warning to exercise caution with this paper but acknowledge that it could be or in parts be true and the fact that none of these even have CVE reference numbers which means they did not work with or have been acknowledged by National Cybersecurity FFRDC, again not suprising if you didn't bother to work with them but it doesn't mean they won't get them.
 
While you shouldn't disregard that these could be real the current recommended actions are do nothing. Until these get some kind of official recognition by CVE, AMD and manufacturers like HP/Dell/Lenovo who will in due time issue advisories there is nothing else to do. No one can confidently say they are either real or fake, it's all pending further analysis.
 
Before anyone points to Meltdown and Spectre and why those were believed they did not lack all the above mentioned traits and were very quickly confirmed by Intel and AMD.

First of all: Dan Guido said that himself.
 
Second: You just disqualified yourself from EVERY viable discussion with that kind of statement. How old are you? 14?
 
Third: I'm a Sysadmin, so i do actually know a few things about computers. I may not be a security expert, but i do know my way around secure systems. Let's assume those vulnerabilities are real. For Ryzenfall 1-4 the first step is to get through the VSM, which was introduced with Windows 10. After that, you'll need to get access to the LSASS (Local Security Authority Subsystem Service), which has also been reworked with Windows 10 (split in different and isolated threads that can't be accessed directly) and makes it pretty much impossible to gain any access to anything hardware related without any Admin rights. Now, even if you have full Admin rights: You need a driver that has write access to the PSP. After that you have to get the right Bios hashes for the bios in question.
Same applies to Fallout 1-3 - only difference is that it uses the Bootloader of the SP.
 
ALL of that implies however, that you've cracked the Microsoft VSM, which would give you access to EVERY system and not only AMD based ones. And you even need Admin rights to put Chimera to "use" - you'd also need physical access, because you have to restart Windows without the Driver Protection. Which is the case for all of those attacks, btw. So: you need physical access to ALL of those attacks, UNLESS someone has already deactivated the driver protection on that system.
So: 3 of those attacks need a bios flash. The rest of those need drivers. Ever tried to install drivers remotely on Windows? Ever tried to install - even signed but not vendor correct - drivers?
 
Basically, if you go through all of that trouble, EVERY System is vulnerable, not just an AMD one.
 
Still: There are NO technical details inside the Whitepaper from CST, so all of that are just assumptions based on what the results "should" be.

First of all: Dan Guido said that himself.
 
Second: You just disqualified yourself from EVERY viable discussion with that kind of statement. How old are you? 14?
 
Third: I'm a Sysadmin, so i do actually know a few things about computers. I may not be a security expert, but i do know my way around secure systems. Let's assume those vulnerabilities are real. For Ryzenfall 1-4 the first step is to get through the VSM, which was introduced with Windows 10. After that, you'll need to get access to the LSASS (Local Security Authority Subsystem Service), which has also been reworked with Windows 10 (split in different and isolated threads that can't be accessed directly) and makes it pretty much impossible to gain any access to anything hardware related without any Admin rights. Now, even if you have full Admin rights: You need a driver that has write access to the PSP. After that you have to get the right Bios hashes for the bios in question.
Same applies to Fallout 1-3 - only difference is that it uses the Bootloader of the SP.
 
ALL of that implies however, that you've cracked the Microsoft VSM, which would give you access to EVERY system and not only AMD based ones. And you even need Admin rights to put Chimera to "use" - you'd also need physical access, because you have to restart Windows without the Driver Protection. Which is the case for all of those attacks, btw. So: you need physical access to ALL of those attacks, UNLESS someone has already deactivated the driver protection on that system.
So: 3 of those attacks need a bios flash. The rest of those need drivers. Ever tried to install drivers remotely on Windows? Ever tried to install - even signed but not vendor correct - drivers?
 
Basically, if you go through all of that trouble, EVERY System is vulnerable, not just an AMD one.
 
Still: There are NO technical details inside the Whitepaper from CST, so all of that are just assumptions based on what the results "should" be.

First of all: Dan Guido said that himself.
 
Second: You just disqualified yourself from EVERY viable discussion with that kind of statement. How old are you? 14?
 
Third: I'm a Sysadmin, so i do actually know a few things about computers. I may not be a security expert, but i do know my way around secure systems. Let's assume those vulnerabilities are real. For Ryzenfall 1-4 the first step is to get through the VSM, which was introduced with Windows 10. After that, you'll need to get access to the LSASS (Local Security Authority Subsystem Service), which has also been reworked with Windows 10 (split in different and isolated threads that can't be accessed directly) and makes it pretty much impossible to gain any access to anything hardware related without any Admin rights. Now, even if you have full Admin rights: You need a driver that has write access to the PSP. After that you have to get the right Bios hashes for the bios in question.
Same applies to Fallout 1-3 - only difference is that it uses the Bootloader of the SP.
 
ALL of that implies however, that you've cracked the Microsoft VSM, which would give you access to EVERY system and not only AMD based ones. And you even need Admin rights to put Chimera to "use" - you'd also need physical access, because you have to restart Windows without the Driver Protection. Which is the case for all of those attacks, btw. So: you need physical access to ALL of those attacks, UNLESS someone has already deactivated the driver protection on that system.
So: 3 of those attacks need a bios flash. The rest of those need drivers. Ever tried to install drivers remotely on Windows? Ever tried to install - even signed but not vendor correct - drivers?
 
Basically, if you go through all of that trouble, EVERY System is vulnerable, not just an AMD one.
 
Still: There are NO technical details inside the Whitepaper from CST, so all of that are just assumptions based on what the results "should" be.

First of all: Dan Guido said that himself.
 
Second: You just disqualified yourself from EVERY viable discussion with that kind of statement. How old are you? 14?
 
Third: I'm a Sysadmin, so i do actually know a few things about computers. I may not be a security expert, but i do know my way around secure systems. Let's assume those vulnerabilities are real. For Ryzenfall 1-4 the first step is to get through the VSM, which was introduced with Windows 10. After that, you'll need to get access to the LSASS (Local Security Authority Subsystem Service), which has also been reworked with Windows 10 (split in different and isolated threads that can't be accessed directly) and makes it pretty much impossible to gain any access to anything hardware related without any Admin rights. Now, even if you have full Admin rights: You need a driver that has write access to the PSP. After that you have to get the right Bios hashes for the bios in question.
Same applies to Fallout 1-3 - only difference is that it uses the Bootloader of the SP.
 
ALL of that implies however, that you've cracked the Microsoft VSM, which would give you access to EVERY system and not only AMD based ones. And you even need Admin rights to put Chimera to "use" - you'd also need physical access, because you have to restart Windows without the Driver Protection. Which is the case for all of those attacks, btw. So: you need physical access to ALL of those attacks, UNLESS someone has already deactivated the driver protection on that system.
So: 3 of those attacks need a bios flash. The rest of those need drivers. Ever tried to install drivers remotely on Windows? Ever tried to install - even signed but not vendor correct - drivers?
 
Basically, if you go through all of that trouble, EVERY System is vulnerable, not just an AMD one.
 
Still: There are NO technical details inside the Whitepaper from CST, so all of that are just assumptions based on what the results "should" be.

First of all: Dan Guido said that himself.
 
Second: You just disqualified yourself from EVERY viable discussion with that kind of statement. How old are you? 14?
 
Third: I'm a Sysadmin, so i do actually know a few things about computers. I may not be a security expert, but i do know my way around secure systems. Let's assume those vulnerabilities are real. For Ryzenfall 1-4 the first step is to get through the VSM, which was introduced with Windows 10. After that, you'll need to get access to the LSASS (Local Security Authority Subsystem Service), which has also been reworked with Windows 10 (split in different and isolated threads that can't be accessed directly) and makes it pretty much impossible to gain any access to anything hardware related without any Admin rights. Now, even if you have full Admin rights: You need a driver that has write access to the PSP. After that you have to get the right Bios hashes for the bios in question.
Same applies to Fallout 1-3 - only difference is that it uses the Bootloader of the SP.
 
ALL of that implies however, that you've cracked the Microsoft VSM, which would give you access to EVERY system and not only AMD based ones. And you even need Admin rights to put Chimera to "use" - you'd also need physical access, because you have to restart Windows without the Driver Protection. Which is the case for all of those attacks, btw. So: you need physical access to ALL of those attacks, UNLESS someone has already deactivated the driver protection on that system.
So: 3 of those attacks need a bios flash. The rest of those need drivers. Ever tried to install drivers remotely on Windows? Ever tried to install - even signed but not vendor correct - drivers?
 
Basically, if you go through all of that trouble, EVERY System is vulnerable, not just an AMD one.
 
Still: There are NO technical details inside the Whitepaper from CST, so all of that are just assumptions based on what the results "should" be.

First of all: Dan Guido said that himself.
 
Second: You just disqualified yourself from EVERY viable discussion with that kind of statement. How old are you? 14?
 
Third: I'm a Sysadmin, so i do actually know a few things about computers. I may not be a security expert, but i do know my way around secure systems. Let's assume those vulnerabilities are real. For Ryzenfall 1-4 the first step is to get through the VSM, which was introduced with Windows 10. After that, you'll need to get access to the LSASS (Local Security Authority Subsystem Service), which has also been reworked with Windows 10 (split in different and isolated threads that can't be accessed directly) and makes it pretty much impossible to gain any access to anything hardware related without any Admin rights. Now, even if you have full Admin rights: You need a driver that has write access to the PSP. After that you have to get the right Bios hashes for the bios in question.
Same applies to Fallout 1-3 - only difference is that it uses the Bootloader of the SP.
 
ALL of that implies however, that you've cracked the Microsoft VSM, which would give you access to EVERY system and not only AMD based ones. And you even need Admin rights to put Chimera to "use" - you'd also need physical access, because you have to restart Windows without the Driver Protection. Which is the case for all of those attacks, btw. So: you need physical access to ALL of those attacks, UNLESS someone has already deactivated the driver protection on that system.
So: 3 of those attacks need a bios flash. The rest of those need drivers. Ever tried to install drivers remotely on Windows? Ever tried to install - even signed but not vendor correct - drivers?
 
Basically, if you go through all of that trouble, EVERY System is vulnerable, not just an AMD one.
 
Still: There are NO technical details inside the Whitepaper from CST, so all of that are just assumptions based on what the results "should" be.

No. I don't, because either i completely misunderstood how the PSP and UEFI work, or i am right in that those are separated "enough" so that this can't be exploited in that way. Also, at least on my board i have to have the UEFI Network stack enabled to flash over the Internet, which i don't and as a Sysadmin it is standard policy in many companies to also turn that feature off.
Timeline ======== 09-28-17 - Vulnerability reported to AMD Security Team. 12-07-17 - Fix is ready. Vendor works on a rollout to affected partners. 01-03-18 - Public disclosure due to 90 day disclosure deadline. Everyone's attention moved to Meltdown and Spectre, because the PSP was already fixed.

Not only did they violate standard procedure, they made an extremely bad choice to be in the same bed with a shady companie that has a known history of manipulating stock markets with false claims.
 
I'm not that optimistic though. The only real positive thing is, that AMD's PSP doesn't have the Network stack built in, like Intel's ME. Even if AMDs PSP is as pitted as swiss cheese, it won't matter, because they are not vulnerable from the outside.
 
Edit: About Dan Guido - he specifically states, he has been paid by CST and "all 13 Flaws have been confirmed", while others already laid waste to some of those flaws, because they are simply not flaws "per se".

Not only did they violate standard procedure, they made an extremely bad choice to be in the same bed with a shady companie that has a known history of manipulating stock markets with false claims.
 
I'm not that optimistic though. The only real positive thing is, that AMD's PSP doesn't have the Network stack built in, like Intel's ME. Even if AMDs PSP is as pitted as swiss cheese, it won't matter, because they are not vulnerable from the outside.
 
Edit: About Dan Guido - he specifically states, he has been paid by CST and "all 13 Flaws have been confirmed", while others already laid waste to some of those flaws, because they are simply not flaws "per se".

Well, I'd rather they were addressed without me being notified because they showed up in the news
 
Am I lazy for that?

Not only did they violate standard procedure, they made an extremely bad choice to be in the same bed with a shady companie that has a known history of manipulating stock markets with false claims.
 
I'm not that optimistic though. The only real positive thing is, that AMD's PSP doesn't have the Network stack built in, like Intel's ME. Even if AMDs PSP is as pitted as swiss cheese, it won't matter, because they are not vulnerable from the outside.
 
Edit: About Dan Guido - he specifically states, he has been paid by CST and "all 13 Flaws have been confirmed", while others already laid waste to some of those flaws, because they are simply not flaws "per se".

For me the biggest tell on this one is that the researchers violated standard procedure on the time given before public disclosure.
 
I'll admit that even though I personally can't find sketchy stuff about the HardOCP article, it is true that sketchy stuff from Intel/Nvidia is more likely to be reported in these forums. It might not be bias for AMD, for me personally it's more of a bad sentiment for companies that clearly don't mind doing shady stuff. If they have the history of doing it, every time they do it is more telling for me.
 
Lest we forget when ATi cheated on Futuremark Benchmarks back in the mid 2000s.
 
Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that being aware of the bias that these forums and myself have, this still looks sketchy.
 
As I said up there when I quoted @LAwLz, calling them sketchy doesn't take away from the vulnerabilities themselves (that would be an argumentum ad hominem), however it's important to call them out anyway, then look at the vulnerabilities separately. As for the latter, they seem to be unimportant as they require that your computer already be compromised.
Alright, definitely comforting when someone expert in the matter agrees with one
 
I expect this to die off by thursday.

Personally, i REALLY would like to know, how and why Dan Guido has said anything at all. Many other Security Experts are saying that pretty much all of that is - at least until now - absolute bullcrap.
 
 
BTW, The much bigger question is: IF there is some merit to the PSP being vulnerable (read: Same problem as Intels ME, that STILL haven't been fixed fully, mind you!) - how can it be possible to bypass the Windows 10 VSM, that Microsoft praised as one of the absolute killer security features? By design it should be impossible to run unprotected code, that isn't hashed correctly by the LSASS.
 
Having to need physical access to the machine is a must in all of those cases, so even IF there are real flaws in the System from "the inside" - what do they matter if the attacker has physical access to your machine?

This all screams smear campaign
 
1. 24 hour disclosure instead of industry standard 90/180 day


2. Amdflaws links to a YT video, with comments disabled

3. YT Channel with video was just just March of this year



4. Domain (website records) for this "16 years in operation" company don't exist any earlier than February of this year


 
5. This sketchy quote from their disclaimer
 


6. This OTHER sketchy quote from their disclaimer



7. Exploits are common sense when it comes to security
MASTERKEY: "Exploiting MASTERKEY requires an attacker to be able to re-flash the BIOS with a specially crafted BIOS update. "
REBUTTAL: By the time you let attacker install BIOS you are already PWND
 
RYZENFALL: Exploitation requires that an attacker be able to run a program with local-machine elevated administrator privileges. Accessing the Secure Processor is done through a vendor supplied driver that is digitally signed.
REBUTTAL: By the time you let attacker to have admin rights, they can do anything they want anyway!
 
FALLOUT: Exploitation requires that an attacker be able to run a program with local-machine elevated administrator privileges. Accessing the Secure Processor is done through a vendor supplied driver that is digitally signed.
REBUTTAL: Same as above. Not a major concern
 
CHIMERA: A program running with local-machine elevated administrator privileges. Access to the device is provided by a driver that is digitally signed by the vendor.
REBUTTAL: Same as above. Not a major concern.

Oh man that sounds glorious!
Yeah, it was ICQ for me. Still have the "uh oh" sound as my notification on my phone.
Chat on that while trying to download songs on Napster with a 56k connection hoping I don't get disconnected by a phone call.
It's quite shocking how far we've come...the youth really don't know how good/horrible they have it.

Alright I'll post a different issue that is very on topic. My intent was never to argue, it just always gets to me when people disregard real issues and try to pass them off as "it's only me" or other nonsense. I apologize for my side of it.
 
BE WARY LINKING YOUR PHONE NUMBER TO DISCORD. Personal friends of mine have had a sharp increase in spam calls after doing so for other communities they are a part of. I refuse to do it personally.
 
@ LTT Staff - I hope you guys can look into replacing the phone number requirement with something else eventually, but I understand the need for a serious restriction on accounts joining the channel as it is a huge community.
 
Remember! - Discord is free, they had no income until they released Nitro, but that can't sustain them - they make money through other methods. And they have access to everything you ever say, type, or share through discord. Draw your own conclusions from that.

How much memory was allocated by default for the int. graphics? BY default, It is 512 mb i guess. You might wanna run these tests again with more allocated memory for the int. graphics via the bios.

Personally, i think Adored TV is absolutely in the Right here. I have done Tech Journalism a few years ago and it's one hell of a balancing act sometimes. Not because of the content, but because of what you would like to have as a result. So it's very easy to "tune" the results in various ways.
 
However, this whole thing has been blown out of proportions and yes, Jim did react harsh and very strict in his responses to PCPer. Is that a problem? No. Is it unfair? Maybe. Does this make him a hypocrite? No, not in my opinion, because the underlying theme is different. He called out PCPer based on published Information by them - with Facts against the arguments/results made by PCPer. The Medium is irrelevant, so it could also be an article in a local newspaper - PCPer published that Information knowingly and Jims calling out is just as valid.

Then he OCed wrong The only thing you have to do on those Asrock Boards is put the Clock Speed in and the Voltage. Try "3600" in the Frequency and "1.3" Volts on the VCore, save, reboot and run OCCT with the small preset. I like to Test day to day overclocking with the worst possible case, so i run the small preset for 60 Minutes and then AVX for another 60 Minutes. However, to dial in the OC, i just run it till the Temps are equalized (which takes generally 2-3 Minutes on Air), see if i'm okay with the Temps and either Dial back the VCore more OR ramp up the frequency. In Theory the 1200 should do 1.3V just fine on 3.6 GHz. However, i've seen 1200s even do 1.25V on 3.6 Ghz which is actually pretty damn impressive.
 
Anyway, you can't really destroy something as long as you don't go over 1.4VCore - so just try it^^ If it isn't happy, it just won't clock above a certain point (and obviously crash ). You can "lock" it on that Frequency, but the nice thing about Ryzen is - if you dial in the Frequency like that at least in my opinion it's a lot more forgiving about not enough Voltage. At this point, i'm pretty sure this has to do with XFR still "working" in terms of power regulation. (Came to that conclusion while logging the frequency changes with linux...)

Thanks! It runs at 3.1 GHz and never goes above 50-60C
 

Personally, i think Adored TV is absolutely in the Right here. I have done Tech Journalism a few years ago and it's one hell of a balancing act sometimes. Not because of the content, but because of what you would like to have as a result. So it's very easy to "tune" the results in various ways.
 
However, this whole thing has been blown out of proportions and yes, Jim did react harsh and very strict in his responses to PCPer. Is that a problem? No. Is it unfair? Maybe. Does this make him a hypocrite? No, not in my opinion, because the underlying theme is different. He called out PCPer based on published Information by them - with Facts against the arguments/results made by PCPer. The Medium is irrelevant, so it could also be an article in a local newspaper - PCPer published that Information knowingly and Jims calling out is just as valid.

I kind of disagree with everything said in this thread Reasons why are as following:
 
Gaming at 4K with two 1080s will STILL be a GPU Bottleneck. Every Benchmark i have seen, at 4k with a 1080ti, there is simply no difference. Ryzen+, 2 and 3 have been announced. Since Ryzen is an SOC, Motherboard doesn't make much difference any more. (Except DDR5) So switching from Ryzen to Ryzen+ or 2 on an X370 Board will still be a huge performance benefit. There are a number of reviews out there, that measure time under 30 FPS for any given CPU. Interestingly enough, on Anandtech the 8700K was actually pretty bad and had very high numbers of frames under 30 FPS. Interestingly enough, at release Ryzen was absolute crap in ROTR, even at 4K. With the 8700K review from Anandtech, Ryzen was at the top of the list - so either Anandtech "tuned" the results (which i highly doubt), or the updates helped pretty damn well. Oh and the 7700K has lost a few %. Biggest reason why for me is: Bang for the buck. For me personally i could not justify buying in to a platform, that has absolutely no upgrade path. But - that is just my Opinion, based on the Reviews I've read.
In the end, the simple answer to the Question "When is a 4930K outdated" is: When you feel like it is. You have to do some testing for yourself, watch how the GPUs are loaded and so on.

Because telling assholes on the internet not to do something always works so well. No, he has no commitment to anything. His fans being assholes is not his fault, it is the fault of those fans. Its called personal responsibility. Unless Jim actually told people to doxx and harass Ryan he is not responsible for their actions. Everyone is responsible for their own actions and choices, not some random third party that never encouraged them to do anything.

Nope. Not worth it and probably won't work. Unless you get the2600K for free - then go for it