AMD silently removes memory encryption from consumer Ryzen CPUs

[beanburrito]

AMD silently removes memory encryption from consumer Ryzen CPUs, leaving users unaware that they may be vulnerable — security feature vanishes after newer AGESA firmware, AMD engineers go radio silent when pressed about the change. - archived

Arstechnica - Users cry foul after AMD stripped memory crypto from its consumer CPUs
AMD’s stripping of TSME from consumer CPUs appears to be a deliberate, covert move.

"A decade ago, AMD added a protection to its high-end CPUs to protect them against cold boot attacks and other types of physical exploits that siphon sensitive data out of the connected memory chips. Short for Transparent Secure Memory Encryption, TSME encrypts the entire contents stored in memory, making the data useless to physical attackers.

Over time, AMD added TSME to lower-end processors, including the consumer version of its Ryzen chips, a CPU that costs less than the Pro version. Over the years, users of these lower-end chips have gotten used to the added security. Recently and without warning or notice, this lower-end line of AMD chips suddenly dropped the protection, and did so in a way that was impossible to detect on Windows machines and required a fair amount of technical work when using Linux." - archived

 

[APTI]

I would ask the stupid question here. why do you need that encryption? If the computer is already turned on you have to be in front of it to get stuff which means it is already signed in and encryption is useless. In fact encryption is useless in this kind of case anyway. If the system is on and singed in then the information on it is readily available with or without encryption. If you are worried about somebody intercepting information flowing from RAM to CPU then you might want to look at the guy sitting in your lap. Maybe I don't understand you question or comment but people keep throwing around encryption on everything and I have not seen one hacker dismayed by it, but I have seen a near constant line of customers that lost all the data due to encryption.