Users Cry Foul After AMD Stripped Memory Crypto From Its Consumer CPUs (arstechnica.com)
- Reference: 0183901916
- News link: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/26/06/15/200234/users-cry-foul-after-amd-stripped-memory-crypto-from-its-consumer-cpus
- Source link: https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/06/users-cry-foul-after-amd-stripped-memory-crypto-from-its-consumer-cpus/
> 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 [1]suddenly dropped the protection , and did so in a way that was impossible to detect on Windows machines and required a fair amount of technical work when using Linux.
>
> AMD has yet to say why TSME worked on these CPUs, or even to confirm the change. AMD declined to answer questions sent by email other than to say TSME "is a security feature only applied to PRO CPUs as part of AMD PRO Technologies." The statement is the first known time the chipmaker has explicitly made this restriction public. [...] There's no indication that AMD ever advertised or marketed TSME as being available in consumer CPUs. AMD has long said that a related memory protection, Secure Memory Encryption (SME), is available only in the Pro and Epyc CPU tiers. SME is OS-managed. It uses a single key and allows the OS to selectively encrypt individual memory pages. TSME is firmware-managed. It encrypts all RAM with no OS involvement. When active, it provides protection against physical attacks, including cold boot exploits, DRAM interface snooping, and memory module removal. It activates silently when enabled in the BIOS, making it the more practically useful of the two protections.
Ben Kilpatrick, a self-described "privacy-conscious Linux hobbyist," [2]discovered that TSME had stopped working on his consumer Ryzen processor despite remaining enabled in the BIOS. He spent months investigating, persuaded MSI engineers to test multiple CPUs, motherboards, and firmware versions, and filed a public AMD [3]bug report that traced the change to newer AGESA firmware apparently disabling TSME on consumer chips while retaining it on Pro and EPYC models.
"AMD engineers' comments, such as those mentioned above, and the years of TSME working just fine in the lower-cost tier processors, have understandably conditioned Kilpatrick and other users to reasonably regard it as an expected part of the chip package," reports Ars Technica. "AMD quietly removing it and providing no acknowledgment or explanation strikes these users as something of a betrayal."
Joe Fitzgerald, an expert in silicon-level security, said in an interview: "They could have not realized they did it leading to their cagey responses, or they could have done it intentionally and tried to get away with it, leading to the same cagey responses. But I really feel like an explanation should be in order, even if it was 'TSME was never supposed to be supported. We did ship some firmwares that erroneously enabled it, but you shouldn't use them since we can't guarantee it'll work properly.'"
[1] https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/06/users-cry-foul-after-amd-stripped-memory-crypto-from-its-consumer-cpus/
[2] https://github.com/AMDESE/AMDSEV/issues/292
[3] https://github.com/AMDESE/AMDSEV/issues/292
Enshittification marches ever onward (Score:2)
It seems there's always some update pushed out that removes functionality, with the only option of regaining it being to either buy new hardware or pay a subscription fee.
Altering the deal after the fact is now a standard business practice. Isn't that the kind of thing that governments are supposed to protect us from?
Sorry, I forgot - the corporate sector now IS the government, in many ways and many disguises. Freedom, democracy, and equality before the law are, increasingly, mere illusions.
Re: (Score:1)
I thought about that for a moment, but then I realized that I only turned it on for the hell of it and have exactly 0 concerns that someone will try a cold boot or any other physical attack on my personal computer. I don't use bitlocker on it either. Why should I?
I'm still slightly annoyed to have something taken away, even if it wasn't a very useful thing I didn't need and may not have been working for some time.
Re: Enshittification marches ever onward (Score:1)
> I'm still slightly annoyed to have something taken away, even if it wasn't a very useful thing I didn't need and may not have been working for some time.
It's a "feature" that was never publicly announced or supported on non-Pro processors, not consumer products.
You didn't 'lose' anything, you 'had' something you weren't supposed to, and that mistake has been corrected - you now have, and have always had, everything the Mfg claimed (and documented) the processors could do.
Re: Enshittification marches ever onward (Score:1)
They removed something you never should have had, that your processor never should have done, and that they never, ever told you your processor should've could do.
That's 'enshitification'? No. It's a correction.
Re: (Score:2)
If it's in the CPU I bought, how should it never have had that feature that's clearly in the CPU I bought?
This is the CPU equivalent of those car makers wanting a subscription to enable the heated seats. Maybe AMD will enable it for $5 a month or something.
Re: Enshittification marches ever onward (Score:2)
Never should have had? Suck harder.
Re: (Score:2)
> It seems there's always some update pushed out that removes functionality, with the only option of regaining it being to either buy new hardware or pay a subscription fee.
> Altering the deal after the fact is now a standard business practice. Isn't that the kind of thing that governments are supposed to protect us from?
> Sorry, I forgot - the corporate sector now IS the government, in many ways and many disguises. Freedom, democracy, and equality before the law are, increasingly, mere illusions.
Consumer protection is for real countries. The United States is currently in the process of exposing the fact that it's government is scams built on top of other scams, top to bottom. Illusions of it being anything other than scams are no longer useful, since the power structures are now firmly entrenched and the money flow no longer needs to be disguised.
Well, let's face it (Score:4, Interesting)
You don't need it on consumer hardware. Who's going to go through the trouble of hitting your DIMMs with liquid nitrogen? Nobody, that's who. If you are under that sort of threat, you aren't using consumer hardware.
Does it rub me a little raw that a feature of my 5900 has been removed? Yeah, a little, but not very. If it really bothered me, I'd probably make sure to use a firmware where it still worked.
Re: (Score:1)
Clearly there is no bar.