AMD is in the center of attention today after a series of extremely important vulnerabilities were discovered in its processors, these being similar to Specter and Meltdown discovered for Intel processors. According to those who discovered the vulnerabilities, they affect AMD EPYC, Ryzen, Ryzen Pro and Ryzen Mobile processors, so if you have one of these, it is good to know that you are affected and they can be exploited by hackers.
AMD's processors are affected by four types of vulnerabilities called Ryzenfall, Masterkey, Fallout and Chimera, they also exploit the enclave chip, which theoretically should be impossible to crack. Using these vulnerabilities, hackers can run malware that is impossible to detect by people using computers with AMD processors, and their important information can be extracted without them knowing what is actually happening.
AMD – similar Spectre/Meltdown vulnerabilities discovered
Vulnerabilities in AMD processors allow administrator access to the operating systems of the computers in which the processors are used, so any kind of information can be extracted. The bad part is that a well-thought-out malware can be transferred through a local network to infect other computers in a company or institution, for example, so the problems can turn out to be extremely serious in some cases.
AMD would have learned about these vulnerabilities of its processors only now and stated that it is investigating the situation to see if they are really real and if they are dangerous for customers. However, the vulnerabilities were analyzed by other IT security experts, and they confirmed that AMD processors are indeed affected by them, so probably AMD will not find anything different in its analysis.
AMD started to increase its market share in recent years with new processor models, but this scandal could keep some customers away from the company's products.
