AMD and researchers spar over shocking attack's real-world dangers

Hypothetical threat, or concrete danger?



What you need to know


Researchers have exposed a vulnerability with AMD SEV (Secure Encrypted Virtualization).
In response, AMD has cast doubt on the real-world implications of the discovery, citing physical logistical hurdles for threat actors.
The researchers have responded, disputing the existence of said hurdles.


In one of the more tech-savvy, inside-baseball bits of news to crop up recently, AMD and a group of researchers have begun something of a sparring match, going back and forth over whether AMD SEV (Secure Encrypted Virtualization) has just had a dangerous vulnerability exposed or if nothing more than inconsequential hypotheticals have been presented.

Here's the idea behind SEV (based on how AMD is positioning it): It's meant to safeguard virtual machine data in the cloud so that admins can't go wild and cause chaos. However, in a research paper entitled "One Glitch to Rule Them All: Fault Injection Attacks Against AMD's Secur...