AMD Confirms CTS-Labs Exploits: All To Be Patched In Weeks
by Ian Cutress on March 20, 2018 4:15 PM ESTIf you have been following our coverage regarding the recent security issues found in AMD’s processors and chipsets by security research firm CTS-Labs, it has been a bit of a doozy. Today AMD is posting on their website, in the form of a blog post, the results from their initial analysis, despite CTS-Labs only giving them 1-day notice, rather than the industry standard 60/90-days, as they felt that these were too important and expected AMD to fix them in a much longer timescale. Despite this attitude, AMD’s blog post dictates that all the issues found can be patched and mitigated in the next few weeks without any performance degradation.
The salient high-level takeaway from AMD is this:
- All the issues can be confirmed on related AMD hardware, but require Admin Access at the metal
- All the issues are set to be fixed within weeks, not months, through firmware patches and BIOS updates
- No performance impact expected
- None of these issues are Zen-specific, but relate to the PSP and ASMedia chipsets.
- These are not related to the GPZ exploits earlier this year.
AMD’s official statement is as follows:
Initial AMD Technical Assessment of CTS Labs Research
On March 12, 2018, AMD received a communication from CTS Labs regarding research into security vulnerabilities involving some AMD products. Less than 24 hours later, the research firm went public with its findings. Security and protecting users’ data is of the utmost importance to us at AMD and we have worked rapidly to assess this security research and develop mitigation plans where needed. This is our first public update on this research, and will cover both our technical assessment of the issues as well as planned mitigation actions.
The security issues identified by the third-party researchers are not related to the AMD “Zen” CPU architecture or the Google Project Zero exploits made public Jan. 3, 2018. Instead, these issues are associated with the firmware managing the embedded security control processor in some of our products (AMD Secure Processor) and the chipset used in some socket AM4 and socket TR4 desktop platforms supporting AMD processors.
As described in more detail below, AMD has rapidly completed its assessment and is in the process of developing and staging the deployment of mitigations. It’s important to note that all the issues raised in the research require administrative access to the system, a type of access that effectively grants the user unrestricted access to the system and the right to delete, create or modify any of the folders or files on the computer, as well as change any settings. Any attacker gaining unauthorized administrative access would have a wide range of attacks at their disposal well beyond the exploits identified in this research. Further, all modern operating systems and enterprise-quality hypervisors today have many effective security controls, such as Microsoft Windows Credential Guard in the Windows environment, in place to prevent unauthorized administrative access that would need to be overcome in order to affect these security issues. A useful clarification of the difficulties associated with successfully exploiting these issues can be found in this posting from Trail of Bits, an independent security research firm who were contracted by the third-party researchers to verify their findings.
Mark Papermaster,
Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer
This is followed by a table describing the issues, stating that each issue can be solved by BIOS/firmware updates in the coming weeks. AMD is also set to provide additional updates on the analysis of the issues and mitigation plans over that time. AMD is also prominent about addressing the security issues only, over any others that might have been discussed.
Source: AMD
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danjw - Wednesday, March 21, 2018 - link
Wrong, the issue is in USB controllers that ASMedia sells, it was transferred into the southbridge that AMD uses. They have been used on literally millions of Intel based motherboards over multiple generations of processors. To be clear this was an ASMedia bug not an Intel or AMD bug.IBM760XL - Tuesday, March 20, 2018 - link
These issues are Ryzen-specific, and don't affect Intel chips. The ones by Google Project Zero from January, however, do affect Intel processors as well.But I 100% agree that it puts CTS's unprofessionalism on stark display. If they really cared about security, they would have given standard notice, and it would've all been fixed before public disclosure. Instead all they care about is a quick profit from stock trading.
hescominsoon - Tuesday, March 20, 2018 - link
Wrong. this has nothing to do with the Ryzen CPU...but the third party chipset which contains products from ASmedia that BOTH Intel and AMD use.edzieba - Wednesday, March 21, 2018 - link
4 of the 5 exploits target the Secure Element within the CPU die.SaturnusDK - Thursday, March 22, 2018 - link
edzieba, did you even read AMDs statement or the tl;dr by Mr. Ian Cutress above? The tl;dr reads, and note no. 4:"The salient high-level takeaway from AMD is this:
1. All the issues can be confirmed on related AMD hardware, but require Admin Access at the metal
2. All the issues are set to be fixed within weeks, not months, through firmware patches and BIOS updates
3. No performance impact expected
4. None of these issues are Zen-specific, but relate to the PSP and ASMedia chipsets.
5. These are not related to the GPZ exploits earlier this year."
I would encourage you to read the full article and the full AMD statement.
eva02langley - Tuesday, March 20, 2018 - link
So Linus Torvalds was bang on. CTS-Labs didn't had a clue about what they were talking about and intentionally tried to damage AMD reputation....wow...
iter - Tuesday, March 20, 2018 - link
He and more or less everyone who wasn't paid off to lie or wasn't a brain dead intel fanboy.chobao - Tuesday, March 20, 2018 - link
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-20...AMD is asking for a investigation >.<...okay here comes more potatoes..if the investigation happens
Ian Cutress - Tuesday, March 20, 2018 - link
An investigation into unusual stock trading, not towards any one company. Just to be clear.chobao - Tuesday, March 20, 2018 - link
yes that is nice of AMD, not to point fingers.