AMD, 라이젠 CPU 보안 결함 공식적으로 인정

AMD가 최근 붉어진 라이젠 CPU의 치명적인 보안 결함 문제에 대해 공식적으로 인정했다.

AMD의 수석 부사장 겸 최고 기술 책임자인 마크 페이퍼마스터는 공식 블로그를 통해 최근 이스라엘의 CTS-Labs 연구팀이 공개한 라이젠 CPU(젠 아키텍처)의 보안 결함을 공식적으로 인정히고, 라이젠폴-키메라-폴아웃-마스터키로 이어지는 주요 결함 등에 대해 향후 바이오스 업데이트를 통해 해결해 나갈것이라고 밝혔다.

또한 보안 결함 중 ASMedia 로직으로 만든 프로몬토리(Promontory) 칩셋에 영향을 주는 해당 취약점을 위한 대응 역시 BIOS 업데이트를 통해 제공되지만 칩셋 제조업체와 완화책 개발을 진행하며 언제 해결이 가능한지는 확인되지 않았고, 이들 취약점을 악용한 공격을 원격에서 실행할 수 있는지, 불가능한지에 대해서도 정확하게 밝히지 않았다.

한편, AMD는 이번 보안 결함으로 인해 PC 시장 & 서버 시장의 인텔과의 경쟁에서 점유율 향상 목표에 심각한 타격을 줄 것으로 전망되고 있다.

- AMD 공식 발표 원문 : https://community.amd.com/community/amd-corporate/blog/2018/03/20/initial-amd-technical-assessment-of-cts-labs-research

On March 12, 2018, AMD received a communication from CTS Labs regarding research into security vulnerabilities involving some AMD products. Less than 24 hours later, the research firm went public with its findings. Security and protecting users’ data is of the utmost importance to us at AMD and we have worked rapidly to assess this security research and develop mitigation plans where needed. This is our first public update on this research, and will cover both our technical assessment of the issues as well as planned mitigation actions.

The security issues identified by the third-party researchers are not related to the AMD “Zen” CPU architecture or the Google Project Zero exploits made public Jan. 3, 2018. Instead, these issues are associated with the firmware managing the embedded security control processor in some of our products (AMD Secure Processor) and the chipset used in some socket AM4 and socket TR4 desktop platforms supporting AMD processors.

As described in more detail below, AMD has rapidly completed its assessment and is in the process of developing and staging the deployment of mitigations. It’s important to note that all the issues raised in the research require administrative access to the system, a type of access that effectively grants the user unrestricted access to the system and the right to delete, create or modify any of the folders or files on the computer, as well as change any settings. Any attacker gaining unauthorized administrative access would have a wide range of attacks at their disposal well beyond the exploits identified in this research. Further, all modern operating systems and enterprise-quality hypervisors today have many effective security controls, such as Microsoft Windows Credential Guard in the Windows environment, in place to prevent unauthorized administrative access that would need to be overcome in order to affect these security issues. A useful clarification of the difficulties associated with successfully exploiting these issues can be found in this posting from Trail of Bits, an independent security research firm who were contracted by the third-party researchers to verify their findings.

The security issues identified can be grouped into three major categories. The table below describes the categories, the AMD assessment of impact, and planned actions.

AMD will provide additional updates on both our analysis of these issues and the related mitigation plans in the coming weeks.

 

Mark Papermaster,

Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer