The manufacturer AMD has spotted a significant security flaw on several of these processors. It allows hackers to do a lot of things without your knowledge, but luckily a fix is already available.
Unfortunately for us users, it is possible thata hacker attacks our computer even if we respect the elementary rules of cybersecurity. Do not download from dubious sources, do not retrieve email attachments that seem suspicious to us, have a anti-virus software up to date or not Windows Defender… But sometimes, the vulnerability exploited by hackers is completely invisible to us sinceit affects a component like the processor.
It’s not common, but when it happens, it’s quite violent. We remember this flaw in AMD models allowing you to steal your passwords and which the manufacturer took months to correct. Another had forced him to lower the performance of the processors concerned. And it is once again the American company which has just discovered a touching problem all generations of Zen CPUs. Even 4 in reality, with dangerousness classified as “high”.
This dangerous security flaw affects many AMD processors
In fact, the exploitation of the flaw has to do with the SPI memoryFor Serial Peripheral Interconnect. It is a small component present on the motherboard which stores several important elements, including the BIOS of the system. The operating results range fromdenial of services attack to themalicious code executionpassing through the loss of integrity and availability of the machine. The full list of affected processors is available on AMD’s website, but overall this includes 3000, 4000, 5000, 6000 and 7000 seriesas well as their variations.
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This time fortunately, the manufacturer has already deployed the necessary fixes for the majority of vulnerable models. Their installation goes through BIOS update, which is a simple manipulation, but possibly a source of problems if done incorrectly. Do not hesitate to get help if you notice that your version is older than that indicated in the table on the AMD site.