Some AMD chips are vulnerable to a high-severity security flaw that allows threat actors to steal sensitive data from the endpoint, including passwords and encryption keys. The manufacturer has since released a patch for the vulnerability and urged its users to apply it quickly and minimize the chances of being targeted.
The flaw was discovered by Google’s security researcher Travis Ormandy. His analysis focused on AMD Zen 2 CPUs, and said it “took a bit of work”. However, he managed to discover improper handling of an instruction called “vzeroupper” during speculative execution. If “speculative execution” rings a bell, it’s because the same technique was used in the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities. It’s a common practice used by most silicon OEMs these days, to make the chips run faster.
