Anyone owning an AMD CPU with Zen 1 - Zen 4 microarchitecture may want to double check their BIOS is up to date. According to Tom's Hardware, AMD CPUs with a BIOS patch earlier than 2014-12-17 have a vulnerability that allows anyone with local admin privileges to potentially upload new microcode to the units. This means altering the basic code which dictates how these CPUs run. This isn't something that's usually accessible or even visible outside of official AMD patches.
The exploit was discovered by a team of Google researchers who've been working alongside AMD, and it affects a tonne of chips released over the past eight years. This means if you're rocking something like the Ryzen 7 5700X3D from last year you could be vulnerable thanks to its Zen 3 architecture, whereas those with the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D should be safe with that newer Zen 5.
