They’re intrinsically linked, in fact. If you have kernel access, you can do any number of things, including but not limited to persistent rootkits. I agree that this bug is one step further, since it affects the processor itself, but if somebody has ring 0 access that shouldn’t, you already have problems.
Comment on Almost unfixable “Sinkclose” bug affects hundreds of millions of AMD chips
mox@lemmy.sdf.org 3 months agoanyone with that access can do a lot of damage anyway.
it’s just that there’s no remediation once the flaw has been exploited.
One of these things is not like the other.
Telorand@reddthat.com 3 months ago
Shdwdrgn@mander.xyz 3 months ago
Read it again, in context. What they said is perfectly valid.
mox@lemmy.sdf.org 3 months ago
No, it is misleading. An exploit with no remediation is not remotely comparable to any other root exploit, which can be fixed with a simple OS reinstall.
conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
Yeah, turning an exploit into one that survives a fresh install is a huge deal.
FierySpectre@lemmy.world 3 months ago
It’s always been a thing that the only way to completely be safe after malware is yeeting the old system and getting a new one…
And even then there have been actively exploited issues where the system gets re-infected when reloading the data from a backup. (My memory is a bit rusty on that one, but it was just data being restored, nothing that should install anything)
conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
There has been a small element of risk, but it’s low enough that this meaningfully increases it.