Introduced around 2013, it’s also entirely closed source, existing as an unknown black box within modern AMD CPUs, which makes the security-conscious highly wary.
This makes it a prime target for attacks. In short, it’s a coprocessor that has access to just about every part of the computers to which it’s inside. AMD refers to it as a subsystem “responsible for creating, monitoring, and maintaining the security environment.” It consists of an ARM microcontroller core baked into the main CPU die, and interfaces with the main system memory, IO, and CPU registers. The AMD Platform Security Processor is functionally the company’s equivalent to the Intel Management Engine (ME), which we’ve discussed before. Today, we’ll take a look at what the role of the PSP is, and how this vulnerability can be used against affected machines.
LITEMANAGER SECURITY FLAW DRIVER
This time, it’s AMD’s turn, with a broad swathe of its modern CPU lines falling victim to a dangerous driver vulnerability that could leave PCs open to all manner of attacks.Īs reported by TechSpot, the flaw is in the driver for AMD Platform Security Processor (PSP), and could leave systems vulnerable by allowing attackers to steal encryption keys, passwords, or other data from memory.