According to a report by Ars Technica, AMD has quietly stripped a critical security feature from its lower-end CPUs, leaving unaware users potentially vulnerable to physical attacks. Following a months-long investigation tracked on GitHub, Ben Kilpatrick confirmed that the Transparent Secure Memory Encryption (TSME) feature — which protects CPUs against physical exploits that siphon data from connected memory chips — was suddenly no longer available on AMD CPUs outside the company's Pro lineup.
As the exhaustive inquiry, which involved conversations with AMD engineers, board vendors, and other CPU users, was coming to a head, an AMD engineer abruptly cut discussions short, stating, "My apologies, but I don't have any more information to share on this topic." As of this report, AMD has neither officially acknowledged nor explained the disappearance of the security feature.
