Users cry foul after AMD stripped memory crypto from its consumer CPUs
AMD GIVETH; AMD TAKETH AWAY
AMD’s stripping of TSME from consumer CPUs appears to be a deliberate, covert move.
AMD's Ryzen 7 9850X3D. Credit: Andrew Cunningham
A decade ago, AMD added a protection to its high-end CPUs to protect them against cold boot attacks and other types of physical exploits that siphon sensitive data out of the connected memory chips. Short for Transparent Secure Memory Encryption, TSME encrypts the entire contents stored in memory, making the data useless to physical attackers.
Over time, AMD added TSME to lower-end processors, including the consumer version of its Ryzen chips, a CPU that costs less than the Pro version. Over the years, users of these lower-end chips have gotten used to the added security. Recently and without warning or notice, this lower-end line of AMD chips suddenly dropped the protection, and did so in a way that was impossible to detect on Windows...
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