Earlier quoted context omitted.
If they have liquid nitrogen and a memory dumping boot disk, or a memory bus interceptor.
Is this still a viable attack in 2026?
AMD silently removes memory encryption from consumer Ryzen CPUs
161–170 of 225 posts
Re: AMD silently removes memory encryption from consumer Ryzen CPUs
#162This was never marketed as a feature of the consumer CPUs and if some malignant actor does get physical access to my (consumer) hardware, then them being able to read out bytes through cryo-freezing the RAM really isn't high up on the list of things I'm going to worry about.
Except let's say the argument for running a local model is for your finances or marriage, counseling or help raising children and you want privacy for that, and you're willing to buy the new AMD AI Halo box for that ($4,000 MSRP, July 10th). You're gonna want this shit to be trustable that depending on your marriage that notification that the other person's reading, your shit is accurately being logged. But in the case of a domestic dispute, in this age of AI the partner is being cheated on only has to have a targeted conversation with AI in order to figure out how to read out bytes via cryo-freezing the RAM. The attacker isn't the police because you're not committing crimes. The attacker is your partner that you thought you could trust or maybe your kids trying to get access to your bank account to buy drugs or some such.
Re: AMD silently removes memory encryption from consumer Ryzen CPUs
#163The github issue that never made it in this news: https://github.com/AMDESE/AMDSEV/issues/292 Silent enshittification in the name of updates is getting out of hand. There are several evidences that downgrading BIOS/AGESA to below 1.2.7.0 to 1.2.0.3 brought back TSME for their AMD cpus. I downgrade my bios as a price for my blind trust on AMD, and yes TSME is back. You lost my trust AMD. The lesson learned is that if…
To people who silently downvoted this: please explain why you did that, you're doing things like AMD.
Re: AMD silently removes memory encryption from consumer Ryzen CPUs
#164I don't know how this works but does this mean if someone gained physical access to your locked running computer, they could gain access to your full encrypted drive and anything saved on disk? My reasoning there is if you used an encrypted drive, the decryption key you type when booting up would be stored in memory for the duration of that boot. This seems alarming because it means if someone broke into your living…
This feature was off by default in all the mobos I've seen. It causes many stability issues, as to my experience. The attack is sophisticated, Mr.Nobody, generally, should not worry about expensive cryogenic attacks - three letter guys would extract your key with a wrench. I mean the change is bad - it undermines already damaged trust, but the "average Joe" is extremely unlikely to be affected directly. There are man…
I would honestly them have rather communicated this first clearly.
Re: AMD silently removes memory encryption from consumer Ryzen CPUs
#165Ridiculous because AMD built their reputation off of avoiding BS market segmentation like this. It's ironic that the equivalent Intel model has this feature.
This has implications beyond simply securing against physical access attacks, but also protects against rowhammer and its ilk.
Between this and their recent botched software update verification I'm getting a little wary of AMD.
Re: AMD silently removes memory encryption from consumer Ryzen CPUs
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
it's exactly why we're not allowed a competitive market for CPUs we could all be burning our own tiny ~300nm feature size ICs at home for around the price of a blu ray burner and a dark room setup. Our silicon limitations are not for a lack of hardware, but rather a lack of freedom.
> a lack of freedom > ~300nm feature size Can you point to a specific regulation that prevents me from crafting shitty semiconductors in my shed? I am pretty sure there are entire YouTube channels dedicated to this.
I think it's less any regulation and more the lack of products to facilitate it. The guys rolling their own from scratch on youtube weren't anywhere near 300 nm last I checked.
Re: AMD silently removes memory encryption from consumer Ryzen CPUs
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sneakily and silently removing a feature in a firmware revision is not acceptable, security or otherwise.
> Sneakily and silently removing a feature in a firmware revision is not acceptable What if said feature was sneakily and silently added in the first place? Wouldn't it be acceptable to sneakily and silently removing it in the future then? Or regardless of if it was documented/announced or not, removing anything sneakily and silently is bad?
Yes, silently slipping in changes to capabilities during a firmware update is never okay. In the hypothetical where that happened inadvertently and now needs to be reverted that corrective action needs to be just as noisy as any new feature would be.
Re: AMD silently removes memory encryption from consumer Ryzen CPUs
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, it's AES with a tweak based on the physical address. It adds some protection from RowHammer and the like because flipping a bit in encrypted memory is catastrophic, while it can be done in a controlled manner if it's not encrypted.
Surely ECC already does that. You don't need encryption.
Not that common on consumer hardware.
Re: AMD silently removes memory encryption from consumer Ryzen CPUs
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
This doesn't matter; it's post-sale enshittification... They didn't even wait to make the next model shittier! Also, it probably wasn't the selling point, but it was the baseline of quality, and probably documented online or in manuals. Furthermore, accepting this as normal opens the door to further post-sale enshittification of ALL things. Next thing you know, upgrades here and there are going to degrade the quality…
This is FUD. We have no idea the reason why. Given it was never marketed, it's possible perhaps despite the feature being exposed it never worked correctly and AMD saw fit to just disable it rather than people get a false sense of security through it.
AMD is spreading FUD by not answering why it was removed. They could stop this in its tracks if they wanted.
Re: AMD silently removes memory encryption from consumer Ryzen CPUs
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, it's AES with a tweak based on the physical address. It adds some protection from RowHammer and the like because flipping a bit in encrypted memory is catastrophic, while it can be done in a controlled manner if it's not encrypted.
Surely ECC already does that. You don't need encryption.
ECC just makes it take longer to find the right conditions for Rowhammering. You need to flip more bits in one go to override ECC integrity checks.