According to Foresight News, security company IOActive revealed a critical vulnerability in AMD processors at the recent 2024 Defcon hacker conference. The flaw, named 'inkclose,' affects nearly all AMD processors released since 2006, posing a threat to millions of laptops, desktops, and servers. This vulnerability allows attackers to escalate privileges from ring 0 (operating system kernel) to ring-2, enabling the execution of malicious code in the processor's highest privilege mode, System Management Mode (SMM). The severity of the 'inkclose' vulnerability lies in its ability to bypass SMM protection mechanisms, allowing the implantation of hard-to-detect and remove malware at the firmware level.
AMD has issued microcode updates for several of its latest EPYC data center processors and Ryzen series processors to address this vulnerability. However, AMD has decided not to provide patches for some older but still popular processors, such as the Ryzen 1000, 2000, and 3000 series, as well as the Threadripper 1000 and 2000 series. Users of these older processors will need to rely on standard security measures, which means these systems may face a higher potential threat.