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AMD disclosed the high-severity SinkClose processor vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2023-31315, affecting a broad range of AMD CPUs manufactured since 2006. The flaw can be exploited by an attacker who already has kernel-level access to manipulate System Management Mode (SMM) configuration, bypass SMM lock protections, and execute arbitrary code at the highly privileged Ring -2 level.
Researchers Enrique Nissim and Krzysztof Okupski of IOActive showed multiple exploitation paths, including abuse of the TSeg protection mechanism and access to sensitive data stored in SMRAM. AMD directed customers to obtain product-specific BIOS updates from their OEM or system vendor as the primary mitigation for affected platforms.
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2 events from the most recent confirmed update back to the earliest known activity.
AMD warned about the high-severity SinkClose processor vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2023-31315, affecting many AMD CPUs produced since 2006. AMD advised customers to obtain product-specific BIOS updates from their OEM vendors to mitigate the issue.
IOActive researchers Enrique Nissim and Krzysztof Okupski demonstrated multiple ways to exploit the SinkClose flaw (CVE-2023-31315), including bypassing SMM protections, abusing TSeg, and accessing data in SMRAM. The vulnerability affects a broad range of AMD CPUs and requires prior kernel-level access to reach Ring -2 execution.
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Binarly Research reported that many AMD-based devices remain vulnerable to speculative execution attacks including **Spectre v1**, **Spectre v2**, and **Retbleed** because firmware and hardware mitigations are not being developed, validated, and delivered consistently across the ecosystem. The findings point to a broad firmware attack surface in **UEFI** and **System Management Mode (SMM)**, where weaknesses below the operating system can leave systems exposed even after years of industry attention on side-channel defenses. The research says asynchronous patching across the hardware and firmware supply chain, combined with limited advisory transparency, has left protections uneven throughout device lifecycles. Binarly warned that these foundational hardware security issues persist in modern AMD environments despite broader emphasis on confidential computing, creating conditions in which attackers could still exploit older speculative execution flaws against current systems.
Jun 29, 2026
Researchers at **CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security** disclosed **StackWarp** (**CVE-2025-29943**), a microarchitectural weakness affecting **AMD Zen** CPUs that can undermine the integrity guarantees of **AMD SEV-SNP** “confidential VM” protections. The attack model assumes a **malicious insider with host/hypervisor control** who can run a parallel hyperthread and exploit a previously undocumented hypervisor-side control bit to manipulate the protected guest’s stack pointer behavior, particularly when **Simultaneous Multithreading (SMT)** is enabled. Reported impacts include the ability to recover sensitive data from SEV-SNP guests—such as **cryptographic private keys**—and to enable follow-on compromise scenarios like **bypassing OpenSSH password authentication** and **privilege escalation** within the VM. AMD issued patches (made available in **July 2025**) and later published a security bulletin rating the issue **low severity**, but the disclosure highlights ongoing risk that confidential computing isolation can be weakened by CPU-level behaviors; organizations running SEV-SNP should prioritize applying AMD’s updates and review SMT-related exposure in multi-tenant or high-trust boundary environments.
Jun 29, 2026
Researchers disclosed the **Meltdown** and **Spectre** hardware flaws, showing that speculative execution in modern processors could let attackers read sensitive data across security boundaries on affected devices. Reuters reported that **Meltdown** primarily affected Intel processors by breaking memory isolation, while **Spectre** impacted Intel, AMD, and ARM chips by tricking applications into leaking secrets such as passwords and other protected data. CERT/CC later summarized the broader issue as cache side-channel attacks against CPU hardware using speculative execution, underscoring that the weakness was architectural rather than limited to a single product line. Major vendors and cloud providers moved to contain the fallout with software, firmware, and microcode mitigations, including Microsoft Azure protections for hosted customers and public advisories from manufacturers such as Huawei. Subsequent research showed the problem persisted beyond the initial disclosures: the **ZombieLoad** attacks demonstrated additional Intel data-leakage paths tied to speculative execution, and a later **TSX Asynchronous Abort (TAA)** variant affected some processors previously thought to be resistant. Intel issued microcode updates, but researchers and vendors warned that mitigations reduced rather than eliminated risk, that exploitation generally required local code execution, and that fully disabling the underlying CPU behavior would carry significant performance costs.
Jun 29, 2026