A team of Google researchers working with AMD recently discovered a major CPU exploit on Zen-based processors. The exploit allows anyone with local admin privileges to write and push custom microcode updates to affected CPUs. The same Google team has released the full deep-dive on the exploit, including how to write your own microcode. Anyone can now effectively jailbreak their own AMD CPUs.
The exploit affects all AMD CPUs using the Zen 1 to Zen 4 architectures. AMD released a BIOS patch plugging the exploit shortly after its discovery, but any of the above CPUs with a BIOS patch before 2024-12-17 will be vulnerable to the exploit. Though a malicious actor wishing to abuse this vulnerability needs an extremely high level of access to a system to exploit it, those concerned should update their or their organization’s systems to the most recent BIOS update.
I would guess Zen 1 through Zen 4 is currently the majority of gaming PCs. It’s certainly a massive percentage. I don’t think game companies can realistically just blacklist all of them.
Some companies refuse to boot games that aren’t running Windows 11 in secure boot mode with TPM 2.0 for remote attestation, using the TPM as a hardware ID that’s difficult to fake. Ignoring half the PC gamers who are on Windows 10 is worth it for them for fighting cheaters alone.
I don’t think they will ban anyone until the first microcode cheats are proven to exist, but after that things may turn sideways for some AMD owners in some games.
Okay, but I’m definitely certain that the majority of gamers running Windows 11 in secure boot mode with TPM 2.0 are running Zen 3 or 4. How many times can they cut their user-base in half before the people who are left leave because it’s a dead game?
We’ll have to wait and see. AMD has about 31% hardware share on the Steam hardware survey (which includes the AMD driven Steam Deck of course) and Windows 10 makes up 53% of Team’s user base. Would cutting off 31% from the 44% or PC gamers really hurt their bottom line enough to not warrant anti cheating technology? It’s a significant chunk of gamers, but they’re already dropping literally most PC gamers anyway.
If AMD/Intel were close to a 50/50 split the story may be different, but unfortunately Intel still has most of the PC market share. I think gamers may be tricked into calling AMD hardware “cheater hardware” before calling out their favourite games companies.