CTS Labs Make Mountains Out of Molehills over Minor Secondary Vulnerabilities

Microsoft push out (Spectre)(microcodes), and Meltdown patches for Intel's awful flaws, and Amd crawling in new mud. This is today's rality. Not nice for none. AMD’s stock manipulation or not, really doesn't matter.

 

I stand by my opinion that this is borderline fake, especially since the ASMedia chips are also present on Intel boards and that would make these supposed attacks possible on basically any system.

 

Ah, but it does matter. It is the reason it is being looked at as fake. this is the reality.

 

Looked at as fake... Fake News could be changed to "Possible Flaws". This is how I see it... Because the news of the flaws was pushed out before the normal accepted timeline... Shouldn't be hided as or talked as Fake News. Neither if this was for for Intel or AMD (brand doesn't REALLY matter. Equal bad). For me is this the reality. But I don't stop buying needed chips due this. Flaws will come and from both brand. Be you sure. It's tech.

 

Honestly, once you have this much access as to flash the BIOS or run your own firmware, what's to stop you from just picking up the device and walking away with it? The level of access needed for these to execute would be far and away beyond what I'd consider a flaw or critical design failure since once you are running OEM-signed malicious drivers and BIOSes you can do FAR more than what is being described by CTS.

Furthermore, as pointed out. Contrary to the Meltdown/Spectre whitepaper where it was talking about technology and providing detailed technical explanations for everything. Here, we have a PDF essentially attacking AMD in every sentence and making bold absurd apocalyptic claims. Not to mention the Viceroy shade. And to top it off, their disclaimer says that "everything is opinion and may or may not be fact" - I mean, that's CYA language.

It's like you buying something from my store and me having a legal disclaimer saying "I may or may not buy myself a new cat with your bank account"

 

Unless it is 100% true I would not consider it true. Even the supposed one expert said the common user would probably not be effected. The fact the supposed paper essentially is trying to sell doom and gloom to everyone of just one of vendor and not being truthful it is an industry issue means it is being untruthful by omission. This means fake news, even if there is a glimmer of truth!

 

https://www.theinquirer.net/inquire...-epyc-cpus-critical-flaws-linus-torvalds-fake

FYI, been watching and the ask size of AMD stock went huge. Someone was buying a lot of shares!

 

Yeeeeep, stock market manipulation at its slimiest.

 

The price difference was significant. Even if they bailed in the dip on the short, they made a huge profit. If just 10,000,000 shares at $0.50 per share that is $5,000,000.00 profit, and it could be much higher than that. Big money for a few little white lies!

The problem here too is this may be just the start of this type of raid. Can't wait though for AMD and the start of a proper thread if the need arises.

 

I share the same the same opinion as Linus on this one, but probably not the same Linus you guys may first think of...

http://www.zdnet.com/article/linus-torvalds-slams-cts-labs-over-amd-vulnerability-report/

 

• Our Interesting Call with CTS-Labs-Anandtech.com

by Ian Cutress on March 15, 2018 7:30 PM EST

 

Actually, the one you mention is the Linus I think most people *should* think of first. LOL!

 

CTS is still not willing to discuss the financial motivations etc., this is the most telling. Again the info and PoC supposedly was provided and in one response they said they tried to contact CTS. My guess is this is where they say it all supposedly worked wihout CTS having been contacted. The gist I got from that was after a few days of phone tag CTS was billed 1,600 but it seems CTS will not even say if that was paid.

I just do not buy it yet. While it may be highly possible that with at first having admin access, modding the bios and signed elevated drivers a back door can be created and left this then seems to only be a worry for enterprise Windows 10 systems and those with the knowledge and physical access. Hardly a common security issue.

 

Many points on that interview, here is just one and I have a lot of them;

They claim the Asmedia PoC/exploit worked out of the box on a Ryzen system. My question then is what did the PoC get developed on and why was that system platform not included in the alert besides AMD?

 

It's also fun when you look at how quickly CTS shut down the interview as soon as they got asked about the benefactors of the research.

 

AMD stock had a huge buy at the end of 3/15, stock volume went to over 66,000,000 (ask sizes were huge), my guess here is the short people got out while the getting was good. It seems considering the bitcoin depression things have now somewhat normalized out.

Still waiting on AMD responses here but maybe the attack on stock pricing is over at least.

 

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4157053-amd-security-flaw-narrative-falls-flat
Another story, same site;
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4157242-amd-cts-labs-story-failed-stock-manipulation

 

So I guess it's time to bring out the Trump Hammer

 

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/cts-labs-responds-amd-vulnerability-disclosure,36680.html
https://monctonlife.com/2018/03/cts-labs-responds-to-a-techpowerup-technical-questionnaire.html

 

https://monctonlife.com/2018/03/cts-labs-responds-to-a-techpowerup-technical-questionnaire.html

One issue is CTS is saying Since just a reinstall does not ge rid of this what do you do? Well My Asrock Taichi has a blind bios flash, CPU not even needed, so while a pain I can still get it back even if the current bios is modded not to allow a reflash.

Don't use your system as admin and do not run untrusted EXE's and mostly all is fine. Again I note Linux is suspiciously absent from their discussion, is it time to dump M$?

 

https://glennchan.wordpress.com/201...id-from-viceroy-cts-labs-ninewells-volume-iv/

 

So for two of the exploits it has been verified there can be an issue where kernel level access through a modified firmware can be an issue, Dahhh..............

https://www.securityweek.com/amd-chip-flaws-confirmed-more-researchers
https://research.checkpoint.com/check-point-responds-amd-flaws/

 

How long time need AMD before they can push out answers? Or have they confirmed the flaws?

 

Not sure. I am sure with so many things too look at it will be a bit of time. Consensus so far is that because of initial level of access needed it does not seem to be that big a deal. But it may be something that needs looking into.

The fake news part so far seems to be the doom and gloom and overhype. Also since Asmedia chips are pointed too as a primary concern I am sure platform investigation is needed as well. This is not going away any time soon.

 

CTS-Labs Releases Masterkey Exploit Proof-of-Concept Video
Techpowerup.com Tuesday, March 20th 2018 11:08

"CTS-Labs, the cyber security research firm that claims to have unearthed severe security vulnerabilities with AMD "Zen" CPU architecture, posted its first proof-of-concept demo video."

 

interesting how VERY careful he is not to show himself, not even in the reflection of the secondary display on the left

 

And once again, we see that flashing a malicious BIOS onto a system causes problems - Dun dun duuuuuun.

Seriously, this is as much a vulnerability on AMD as on Intel, ARM, IBM or bloody Tegra.

 

question: would the masterkey 1 vulnerability allow for the remote access on the server and thus being able to flash a malicious bios in the first place? or does it only allow for a modded bios to be flashed and thus access to the secure ARM processor?

if its the former then its not something to sniff at. if its the latter, then its more like "meh, just lock your server room, done!"

 

You need access prior to flashing the BIOS - if you don't have direct access to the system/server, you can't do jack **** with this.

 

You need to flash the bios first to create the backdoor. Simple fix, stop any and all W10 bios updates! I mean he had full control where he might as well have been on the keyboard at the time of the machine.

 

thats the thing, even though he was physically in front of the server he did a remote access bios flash. so i was wondering how he got that access in the first place. was it just regular remote service access or did he do another hack for that? im guessing the former

 

if you notice he had and entered the admin password, so he already had the keys to the castle.

Edit; I also hope to again point out this is a Windows exploit in order to flash as there is no Linux command line to flash. Again dump Windows ?

 

right! i just skipped over the video to get the overall gist nice and important detail right there.

 

That was the point, he was talking us all through it but neglected about logging in entering the admin password. Kind of an important step, also the fact this exploit was a Windows only exploit. This will do actually a lot for those that pay attention but it seems more for those that do not.

Edit; It seems someone did a huge short and sell off of AMD stock to the point it brought the price down to $11.00 a share and volume went over 36,000,000 shares but the price went right back up. I do not think they realize just that PoC shows how much you need to implement the exploit.

Edit 2; Notice on YouTube they have disabled comments, would not want anyone to spoil the fun by pointing out the flaws of password and windows only there.

 

yeah they make absolutely sure they dont offer ANY points of vulnerability themselves @disabling youtube comments, communication going through "PR firm", cutting off phone interviews before they get to the interesting stuff, not giving out any details concerning clients or financials, etc...

 

AMD is taking a hit but I think it more related to Zen2 not being big boost that people were hoping for. This will not happen till Zen3 7nm. Again though in the year or so before that we will find out what Intel has up its sleeve too.

 

AMD though is giving people a relative boost on 12nm... how much people will be able to OC themselves on that new process remains to be seen, but given the process is designed this time around for higher clocks, chances exist the chips might be overclockable to 4.5 GhZ or more - we have to wait and see.

Zen 3 however should be the biggest performance advancement because IBM's 7nm process is touted to allow 5GhZ at baseline with much lower power consumption... and of course, we don't know how much AMD can/will improve upon the IPC.


On the security issues with AMD chips:
https://www.amd.com/en/corporate/security-updates

Extract:
"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. "

So, as it was established before, these 'security exploits' require giving people with malicious intent unrestricted access to their computers and data in the first place.

 

Then it's official. Op should change the thread title.

AMD Confirms CTS-Labs Exploits: All To Be Patched In Weeks

If you have been following our coverage regarding the recent security issues found in AMD’s processors and chipsets by security research firm CTS-Labs, it has been a bit of a doozy. Today AMD is posting on their website, in the form of a blog post, the results from their initial analysis, despite CTS-Labs only giving them 1-day notice, rather than the industry standard 60/90-days, as they felt that these were too important and expected AMD to fix them in a much longer timescale. Despite this attitude, AMD’s blog post dictates that all the issues found can be patched and mitigated in the next few weeks without any performance degradation.

The salient high-level takeaway from AMD is this:

1. All the issues can be confirmed on related AMD hardware, but require Admin Access at the metal
2. All the issues are set to be fixed within weeks, not months, through firmware patches and BIOS updates
3. No performance impact expected
4. None of these issues are Zen-specific, but relate to the PSP and ASMedia chipsets.
5. These are not related to the GPZ exploits earlier this year.

 

Quick question - where's the "Edit thread title" button? ._.

 

Sorry. It's the moderator's job forum.notebookreview.com/threads/fake-news-smear-campaign-targets-amd-this-time-around post #48

 

Quick catch Papusan.
I was about to post the same thing, only CNET would have been my source:
https://www.cnet.com/news/amd-has-fixes-coming-for-its-13-chip-vulnerabilities/

Confirms what you said.

At any rate, CTS blew things out of proportion and never even gave AMD enough time to respond (like they actually have and managed to contradict CTS claims that some of the vulnerabilities cannot be fixed at all).
Calling these flaws 'serious' is a bit of an overstatement though by CTS and some 'doomsayers' because (as it was mentioned before), they need to the metal admin access (At which point the people with malicious intent already have what they want and don't even need to use the said 'vulnerabilities').

 

Well, there you go, it's BS that AMD has been force fed to deal with in the most embarrassing way by scammers trying to make a buck.

And, there's nothing to panic about it, AMD have it handled in due course.

Until then, keep yourself in user privs, maybe even remove Admin up privs for your daily driver user account, and of course, don't let strangers touch your computer.

 

If you don't have it, report your post #1 and ask for a Title change, the mods are usually quick to respond with the change.

 

Sorry I missed the AMD announcement, finally passed out. Would love to see those short sellers faces. My only hope is AMD's announcement blindsided them as well.

 

LOL... Remember this great quote

Given this flaming bag of dog poo was dumped on AMD's doorstep with one day's notice, I'd say their quick response time is fantastic.

 

the funniest thing about this: CTS Labs stated the main reason for them giving AMD only one day time was the expected timeframe of months or even years to come up with mitigations. thus a necessity to inform the public asap because they have a "right to know"

and here we are, AMD coming up with patches insides WEEKS

Sent from my Xiaomi Mi Max 2 (Oxygen) using Tapatalk

 

To be fair, it is AMD promising patches within weeks. I do however tend to believe AMD well before CTS Labs. I can not blame them for the attach as there was no money in just quietly notifying AMD and getting this fixed. On that note am I glad the attempt seems to have failed, you bet! Hopefully it discourages the next person attempting to blindly attack the industries manufacturers.

 

@don_svetlio You can see a option in Right hand side saying Thread tools, under that click on edit Thread title and you're good to go.
@Papusan Thanks for notifying me.
Amd did a good job unlike Intel. In fact the issue was admin privilege so what can we do about WinPE?

 

It doesn't always show up for even the thread creator, that's when you ask a Mod to change it for you

@don_svetlio already changed the Title, IDK why he did as I thought the original Title was just fine

 

Yeah I am not seeing it now on my posts as well.