AMD PSB Vendor Locks EPYC CPUs for Enhanced Security at a Cost

https://www.servethehome.com/amd-psb-vendor-locks-epyc-cpus-for-enhanced-security-at-a-cost/

by virgulino • 6 years ago

342 253 6 years ago

servethehome.com

virgulino2• 6 years ago

TL;DR: Put an Epyc cpu in a Dell once, and it will never work again in any other vendor's motherboard? Is that right?

threentaway• 6 years ago

Yep.

0zymandiass5• 6 years ago

It's not necessarily just Dell, they're just the first to use the feature.

It also won't necessarily work in other Dell motherboards, just ones using the same key as the first.

It's strange Dell would blow the fuses by default, though.

felixfurtak• 6 years ago

Could even enable some sort of region lock too? Selling CPUs at different prices to different markets for example?

Patrick-STH2• 6 years ago

HPE and some other vendors do this, not just Dell.

jlawer• 6 years ago

Its not really vendor locking by design. It locks to a signing key. That key COULD be shared between vendors or even a single vendor could have multiple incompatible keys.

It provides a mechanism to prove the entire boot process hasn't been tampered with, but I wish AMD provided a way to run these fused processors in a generic way without the security chain, with it just reporting that there isn't a secure root of trust. However I assume they are afraid of that allowing malicious code to fool deeper parts of the system without the system administrator knowing.

So good for security, but bad for e-waste and second hand sales.

3np2• 6 years ago

Wouldn’t it make more sense to blow the motherboard rather than the CPU? A compromised CPU without anything connected is pretty useless at boot. The motherboard is what’s connected to all the good stuff.

0zymandiass5• 6 years ago

The CPU isn't what's compromised - this is protecting against a compromised motherboard

soneil7• 6 years ago

I think that’s the chicken & egg. If the motherboard was responsible for this, you’re trusting the firmware to validate itself. So this moves the validation a level lower.

It’s an interesting problem. The solution is valid, but it’s unfortunately permanent.

bayindirh• 6 years ago

However, the root of trust is embedded to the CPU. So, you can't hammer the CPU on another board for keys.

Also, we sometimes lose the CPU rather than the board. As the CPUs become more complex, their probability to fail has risen.

tyingq3• 6 years ago

Is there any guarantee each vendor will only ever use one signing key? Or might we have problems swapping from one Dell to another Dell, for example?

Patrick-STH2• 6 years ago

Discussed later in the video. But this is possible which adds another layer of complexity if one tries to track pulls.

necovek• 6 years ago

I would imagine they'd have to use new ones every once in a while.

What I am most worried about is vendor's key becoming compromised (whether cracked or stolen), which means that a revocation mechanism is missing.

Even with revocation implemented, such equipment would be rendered useless (I imagine vendor would have to cover for replacements).

crdrost• 6 years ago

Would be interesting to know whether Dell will use the signing key to unlock the CPU if you ship it to them, or if it's like old motherboards where there is a physical procedure (it was typically to powercycle with a jumper between two pins that shouldn't normally be joined) to reset it, built into the hardware. Seems strange to be able to "brick" a CPU like that.

soneil7• 6 years ago

The article describes the mechanism as programmable fuses; so there is a near-certain chance these are one-time-programmable and can’t be reset. Ever.

(This is fairly normal in cpus. Picture 8 regular fuses. If you read across them, you’ll get 0xff. Now blow the first four fuses and read again. You’ll get 0xf0. Here’s the catch. You can’t “unblow” them. With real fuses, you’d replace them. If they’re inside the cpu, you replace the cpu.)

Fun trivia. The boot loader signing in the raspberry pi works the same way.

donmcronald2• 6 years ago

Is it even possible to unlock it with the signing key? Saying it's fused implies it's a one time thing, doesn't it?

I had the same initial reaction though. It seems like something that makes more sense as a jumper or something that can be reset by jumper so physical access becomes the requirement.

The only reason I can think of to do it as described is to kill the secondary market or, even worse, to maintain a lifetime licensing requirement on the system. If the signing keys can expire like signing certificates I expect step 2 will be custom signed firmware via a cloud portal where no license means no signing. I hope I'm wrong, but that's likely the endgame here.

TLDR; If the signature on the BIOS can expire, it's more nefarious than it sounds IMO.

shawnz3• 6 years ago

Why couldn't they have put the key in user-resettable memory which erases the disk encryption key when cleared, like with TPMs for example? It was a poor design to even allow it to be used this way.

sterlind• 6 years ago

Booting from disk is the BIOS's job. The whole point is to guard against a compromised motherboard.

Abishek_Muthian2• 6 years ago

So good for security, but bad for e-waste and second hand sales

I concur, but it's true for even consumer devices like smartphones. Once the software updates stop, if security is the key then the devices are e-waste. Many times, I wish there was an International law which forces manufacturers to unlock their device when they stop pushing software updates to their device, so that alternate firmware can be installed. Of course this is just a wishful thinking, even those who abandoned their smartphone segment entirely(MS) didn't do this, So why would those who run profitable business out of planned obsolescence do it?

xwdv• 6 years ago

It almost seems that a law like that would be something out of a sci-fi or cyberpunk universe.

ornornor• 6 years ago

The law doesn’t need to be international, only one large enough market needs to do it. The market has to matter enough that the manufacturers won’t just say “screw them” and pull out of it. Then the mechanics are there and everyone benefits even those who live where there is no such law.

g_p• 6 years ago

The UK is currently taking steps towards this - the plans aren't perfect, but will require "security updates until" dates, no default or symmetrically derived passwords, and a vulnerability disclosure programme to be available.

It doesn't go as far as to force unlocking, but requiring transparent disclosure of a committment to security update longevity (like Chromebooks and pixel phones have) is probably the first step along the road to that.

segfaultbuserr• 6 years ago

Its not really vendor locking by design. It locks to a signing key.

I see, so it's basically AMD's implementation of Intel Boot Guard, but on servers instead of laptops. On boot, the CPU verifies the BIOS's signature from its OTP memory and refuses to boot if verification fails.

Theoretically, if you move CPUs between different laptops, you'll find the CPUs are locked to its platform as well, but we don't feel it since they are not replaceable, the only visible effect is that the firmware has been locked and you cannot run coreboot.

And now the same thing is coming to servers and it has a bigger visible effect...

throwaway20484• 6 years ago

It is designed to destroy the secondhand market, the fact it can be hand waved away as "security" is just the smokescreen.

It could be implemented in a way that preserves the ability to reuse CPUs, but it wont be.

rocqua• 6 years ago

What would such an alternative implementation be?

bubblethink4• 6 years ago

So good for security

This is entirely debatable. This is essentially bootguard for socketed CPUs similar to how most laptops behave. For one, it makes fixing the crap that Dell and their contractors write impossible. You cannot replace the bios with coreboot.

For all these features that require blessings, I really liked apple's use of the term notarised. Everyone should call these notarisation features rather than security ones. It's as boring and useless as going to a notary, if you have ever done that.

josh2600• 6 years ago

Notarization is good. Intel calls enclave signing “attestation”, which is clear to me.

Covzire• 6 years ago

What problem is this trying to solve? Is there that much of a black market for data center CPUs?

0zymandiass5• 6 years ago

BIOS (UEFI) level rootkits

im3w1l3• 6 years ago

I managed to get that much from the article but I still feel I'm missing a few pieces here. Are UEFI rootkits an actual concern, like are they common in the wild? Why should the responsibility of detecting them rest with the processor? How is this related to the Secure Encrypted Virtualization?

fulafel• 6 years ago

Their statement says "It is a defense-in-depth feature", so maybe not?

rasz5• 6 years ago

is the think of the children excuse.

rasz5• 6 years ago

Its called Secondary market, nothing black about it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxZ21Q0VSdE

userbinator2• 6 years ago

I am beyond sick of this "security" justification being used for everything. At the end of the day, the only thing really being secured are the greedy vendor's profits.

intc• 6 years ago

And this doesn't solve the issue with PSP either. So not much actual progress with security. We need CPUs which do not contain black boxes and allow us to use open source (auditable) firmware (UEFI BIOS).

canofbars2• 6 years ago

There are some realistic benefits. If my phone gets stolen, there is no way for it to be wiped and reused without my input. And if it makes it back to me, it is extremely unlikely that it has been loaded with malware which will send off my data when I log in again.

But yes, its really shitty how the downsides end up with the loss of user control and ewaste. Especially when it is possible to design something that is secure and that the user controls.

swiley2• 6 years ago

Really? What phone do you have? A decent number of the recent iPhones have a bootloader exploit now. So there’s no security, just a lot of bitchy software.

supernova87a2• 6 years ago

Well, the market is free for someone to offer a processor that doesn't care about "security" (whether it is or isn't the excuse you deem it to be), and we could see if that offering is successful. Maybe there's a new role for something like that. Cursing the situation won't do any good.

archi423• 6 years ago

You mean that's going to surely happen, because the server CPU market has traditionally been easy to enter due to low R&D costs, steady avaibility of qualified engineers, cheap manufacturing equipment and customers eager to adopt unknown brands? /s

argb11• 6 years ago

With a criminal penalty via the DMCA for bypassing it, because encryption is involved. That's why I'm so angry and want companies employing such encryption to be prevented from doing so or face prosecution.

So if I wanted to modify my car to unlock performance that's usually OK and certainly has been considered moral for decades. But if I wanted to unlock a core in my Ryzen CPU, or just hardware hack my GPU (Radeon Vega and above) to make it do neat tricks, I now technically risk a FELONY because of the PSP encryption and the DMCA - even though I want nothing to do with cracking copy protection. That is enough to have a chilling effect and prevent neat stuff from being released.

AMD have gone as far as signing the BIOS* on their recent GPUs, so tweaking it may be technically illegal (assuming you could crack the signature, though)!

This is unprecedented, nobody ever risked a potential felony for wanting to look inside their car to see how it works, or modifying their household appliances.

We need to get together (on Twitter and other social media) to fight this and let consumers know what is happening, because if people did, especially the more technically minded enthusiasts/gamers, that would put pressure on AMD and others to stop.

Specifically for gamers, let them know it's likely a FELONY to unlock a core in their Ryzen CPU or Radeon GPU due to PSP crypto. Just as with the ink cartridge recyclers who have been prosecuted for breaking cartridge chip security.

* = Radeon Vega and later GPUs have a Cortex-A5 PSP which runs autonomously, executing the Trustonic TEE from the SPI BIOS chip at boot, once the signature has been verified. Yes a whole DRM operating system running on the GPU - if you want to see for yourself, take a Radeon Vega or later BIOS and run binwalk -e to extract the compressed TEE.

tyingq3• 6 years ago

This will be an interesting mess on eBay.

the_pwner224• 6 years ago

The title as submitted to HN is super clickbaity. Overall this doesn't seem 'bad', aside from some questionable defaults that other commenters said about it being enabled by default.

judge20202• 6 years ago

It really should copy the article:

AMD PSB Vendor Locks EPYC CPUs for Enhanced Security at a Cost

fiberoptick2• 6 years ago

Should be corrected to "Vendor-Locks", as well.

Zenst• 6 years ago

This may well be a case of the vendor does this, they get a better price as removes all aspects of reselling the CPU's on and the whole grey market risk - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_market

Large vendor, such details may mean a few dollars saving on the CPU's and that will add up. For many it won't be an issue, more a gotcha for the second hand market upon those thinking they can buy and part it out. So down the line, this is going to make some second hand CPU's a real gotcha unless these chips have identifiable visible marking.

brokencode• 6 years ago

Is there any way to “fix” the processor afterwards? Maybe send it to AMD to be reset? If I’m buying a multi thousand dollar processor, I’d feel better if I could reuse it in other systems if needed.

soneil7• 6 years ago

If they’re setting OTP on the die, all AMD could offer would be a warranty replacement at best. There’s no etching new fuses into a packaged die.

p1mrx• 6 years ago

They could blow the key to an "insecure" state, and then have a jumper on the motherboard to allow insecure booting.

argb11• 6 years ago

It could be done with some kind of JTAG mod-chip, but this depends on what kind of JTAG security they've implemented.

If you want to know where to start, search GitHub for 'KaveriPI', if you unpack AMD BIOSDBG.EXE you can find a complete list of processor registers. This is all from 2015 but the PSP is documented in there.

There's also a Microsoft Access database which has all the JTAG registers, but I don't have the time to decode the meaning of the fields... It is likely that things have changed since then but it still might be enough for a start.

Should the JTAG interface be protected then some kind of laser(?) fault injection might be required to open it up. I guest some of the eFuse bits can be overwritten, maybe there's a combination which can remove the lock. An innovative recycling company could work on making a jig to automate this somehow...

Some PSP JTAG stuff here (publicly available material from GitHub in 2015, fair use applies): 41469,3529,164000,164999,"SMU_PSP_efuse_ovr_tried",,1,0,0,0,50,"0000",0, 41470,3529,164000,164999,"SMU_PSP_FRA_pass_ld_err",,1,1,1,0,50,"0001",0, 41471,3529,164000,164999,"SMU_PSP_FRA_pass_ld_cor",,1,2,2,0,50,"0002",0, 41472,3529,164000,164999,"SMU_PSP_efuse_pdmb_aes_dis",,1,3,3,0,50,"0003",0, 41473,3529,164000,164999,"SMU_PSP_efuse_pcpu_dis",,1,4,4,0,50,"0004",0, 41474,3529,164000,164999,"SMU_PSP_efuse_ccp_cyph_dis",,1,5,5,0,50,"0005",0, 41475,3529,164000,164999,"SMU_PSP_efuse_FRA_en",,1,6,6,0,50,"0006",0, 41477,3529,164000,164999,"SMU_PSP_efuse_proto",,1,7,7,0,50,"0007",0, 41478,3529,164000,164999,"SMU_PSP_efuse_secure",,1,8,8,0,50,"0008",0, 41552,2352,164000,164999,"SMU_PSP_hard_resetb",,1,31,31,0,50,"101F",0, 41553,2352,164000,164999,"SMU_PSP_early_resetb",,1,30,30,0,50,"101E",0, 41554,2352,164000,164999,"SMU_PSP_slv_mbus2_reset",,1,29,29,0,50,"101D",0, 41555,2352,164000,164999,"PSP_SCAN_MODE_STICKY",,1,28,28,0,50,"101C",0, 41568,2352,164000,164999,"PSP_AEB_307_PCPU_RST_DLY_TDR_en_pclk",,1,15,15,0,50,"100F",0, 41569,2352,164000,164999,"PSP_AEB_304_PCPU_FORCE_rst_en_pclk",,1,14,14,0,50,"100E",0, 41579,2352,164000,164999,"PSP_Resetn",,1,8,8,0,50,"1008",0, 43605,555,164000,164999,"PSP_ENABLE_SPARE",,0,1,1,0,50,"0001",0, 43642,555,164000,164999,"PSP_SPARE",,0,7,14,0,50,"0007",0,

non-entity2• 6 years ago

I get why its done, but all this locking down of modern systems is making me rapidly lose interest in computing.

wu_187• 6 years ago

Honestly I see this as a net positive. It increases the security of the server, which is good for everyone. The secondary market will adjust accordingly, probably by selling the processor/motherboard/barebones server together. The only issue I can see is that there is no way to distinguish a locked processor from an unlocked one.

saagarjha3• 6 years ago

The secondary market will adjust accordingly, probably by selling the processor/motherboard/barebones server together.

You do understand that this can be fairly annoying, yes?

probably_wrong• 6 years ago

It increases the security of the server, which is good for everyone

That is exactly the point: it isn't good for everyone. In particular, it is suspicious that a move in the name of security just so happens to negatively affect the secondary market. A market that by definition doesn't net AMD any money.

If AMD had released this exact same feature and said "we are doing this because the second-hand market is bad for our sales", regulators would immediately jump at them for anti-competitive behavior. And the fact that there is no option to disable this check at all makes it even more suspicious.

It is possible that the benefits outweigh the downsides. But I wouldn't give them a pass that easily.

gigatexal• 6 years ago

Some enterprising enthusiasts will find a way around this i hope

userbinator2• 6 years ago

Hopefully the keys get leaked someday, as often eventually happens with such DRM-ish schemes.

fiberoptick2• 6 years ago

Does this defend against any additional attack surface that wasn't already defended by the UEFI Secure Boot standard?

wmf• 6 years ago

Yes, UEFI Secure Boot defends against OS/bootloader malware while this defends against flashing malware into the UEFI firmware itself.

arpa2• 6 years ago

Wait so if i flash malware into the firmware, i should also have a spare fresh EPYC CPU i could install?

non-entity2• 6 years ago

So if I understand correctly, I wouldn't be able to flash, say coreboot?

pantalaimon2• 6 years ago

The joke is that UEFI got so complex that we can have malware there in the first place.

rasz5• 6 years ago

It defends big vendors against secondary market.

walrus015• 6 years ago

I'm not as sketched out about this as if it were single socket workstation ryzen/threadripper CPUs. In the market from $1000 to $6000 workstation desktops where enthusiasts and people with specific requirements (or just 10, 15, 20 years of experience building x86-64 PCs themselves) would want to build their own desktop from individual components ordered off Newegg.

I doubt more than a single digit percentage of 'serious' dual socket (64-128+ core) rackmount server customers are going to be buying their own barebones motherboards and CPUs and assembling it themselves. They're going to buy it from a Dell, HP or a Supermicro integrator or similar. If you're buying a $12,000+ server with 128 cores and 512GB to 4TB+ of RAM and some fast NVME storage it's highly unlikely you're putting it together yourself.

Any massive hosting/cloud scale operations that want to DIY their own EPYC systems from pieces will be doing it through a Taiwanese integrator, such as those that supply the ecosystem components for open compute platform server motherboards. And as such they'll also not encounter any technical issues or procurement issues with this. At the point where you have two $3000 CPUs on a motherboard that costs $1200, the full firmware/motherboard/CPU integration and qualification process is very different than putting a $399 ryzen into a $300 board.

soneil7• 6 years ago

Not yet. We will in 5 years time when their resale value meets our budgets.

I work in a rather budget-constrained lab environment. “Beg, borrow, steal” is the order of the day. Just today I was pricing out pre-loved Gen8 HPs. In 5 years time I could be exactly the hypothetical the article outlines.

This isn’t today’s problem - it’s a problem we’re creating today. We’ll hit it when your examples start retiring them and my example are eager to recycle them.

walrus015• 6 years ago

Yes - and no, I know lots of people including myself who have things like older dual socket Dell R710 as home test hypervisor servers. Also a very tiny percentage of people will bother to ever upgrade the CPUs on them.

For home lab stuff... When people buy a $200 used Dell R610 off ebay with two 8-core CPUs they most likely expect to use it in the exact same CPU configuration. Maybe add RAM. And probably use their own choice of SATA 6Gbps SSD in the drive trays instead of whatever old, possibly unreliable used spinning drives might come with it.

I have a 4U, quad socket Dell R910 with 32 total cores and 256GB of RAM that I got for $350. I'm absolutely not going to go messing around with replacing the CPUs on it with something I've purchased from ebay. When it's too old or slow, or I'm tired of having a 500W electrical load in my garage, I'll replace it with another thing that's come off a 3-4 year lease cycle.

COGlory• 6 years ago

I work in a rather budget-constrained lab environment. “Beg, borrow, steal” is the order of the day. Just today I was pricing out pre-loved Gen8 HPs. In 5 years time I could be exactly the hypothetical the article outlines.

Likewise for me. I AM building a $20,000 HPC because simply put, no one will sell us one for anything close to what we can actually afford and when it affects the speed and capability of my research and publications personally, it feels like a waste to leave extra performance on the table.

djsumdog• 6 years ago

As a University student, I had dual Athlon XPs on a Tyan board. It was a lot of money for me back then, and the power supply melted to the board (not the power supply's fault either. I soldered on a new ATX connector and the 2nd power supply also melted to the board). If I couldn't use those processors in any other machines except a Tyan, I would be insanely pissed off.

ohazi• 6 years ago

The "this is for security" argument would make sense if they only locked CPUs that were sold by the vendor together with the motherboard, or if they had an action that an administrator could affirmatively take to lock the CPU.

But automatically, permanently "poisoning" any CPU that's inserted into the socket after a single boot? That sounds like it's being done for economic reasons.

They want to turn the used CPU market into a sketchball market for lemons so that everyone is so scared that they only buy board+CPU combos directly from the vendor rather than trying to save a few pennies here and there.

caf4• 6 years ago

I don't know, when you think about what makes easier (cheaper) for the vendor, this way they just have to assemble the CPUs into the motherboards and ship the systems like they always have.

I can't see that the market for enterprise system is heavily affected by grey market CPUs. Their customers are by and large buying these systems built & configured, and racking them up as they come.

It'd be nice if there was a jumper you could set on the motherboard to stop it claiming a CPU though (maybe there even is?).

dastx3• 6 years ago

My understanding was that you can put this in any other motherboard with the same signing key. Presuming the intent her is that every single machine would have to have a different signing key. If this was the case, then yes, security seems to be the reason.

However, and I may have misunderstood this so please do correct me if I have, based on the article, it seems for certain vendors, they share the same signing key with multiple machines (presuming whole lines), in which case this certainly seems to be about vendor lock-in from the vendor side.

justinclift2• 6 years ago

If I put a cpu in a server (Dell, HP, whatever), and that CPU then doesn't function in other equipment, than that cpu is broken. That's not an exaggeration in any way.

So, the server maker then owes me a new cpu (of the same model obviously) that does work.

It'll be interesting to see the legal fallout from this, as purposely breaking customer owned gear is not going to end well.

snuxoll3• 6 years ago

While shitty, if this required pre-programmed OEM CPU’s it would be one thing - but knowing I could put a several thousand dollar boxed CPU into a branded motherboard and have it perpetually locked to that OEM is horrible.

Quite frankly this should be an optional security feature I can flip off with a physical switch on the board - go show an alert on the BMC for all I care, but as is this is total bullshit.

TwoBit• 6 years ago

AMD created this feature, so why not complain to them?

CuriousCosmic2• 6 years ago

While reaching out directly to the company is definitely a strong way to express disagreement, I almost guarantee that someone from AMD PR will be reading through comments on tech community posts like these.

Expressing discontent in an open forum can catalyse a much larger reaction that PR depts will pay much more attention to compared to a few angry emails or twitter DMs.

alisonkisk• 6 years ago

No one owes you anything if the CPU functions exactly as advertised.

If you don't want a platform-secured CPU, don't buy one.

erik_seaberg2• 6 years ago

Nobody advertises irreparable damage. This testing lab found out the hard way and then had to follow up with the vendors to get an explanation.

Dylan168079• 6 years ago

If you don't want a platform-secured CPU, don't buy one.

...the problem is what happens when you buy an unlocked CPU.

argb11• 6 years ago

It becomes a problem when there's a monopoly or a duopoly of suppliers and there are no suitable alternatives on the market with similar performance characteristics. I believe then the FTC can get involved with antitrust matters if they are abusing their dominant position to prevent reuse/recycling.

throwaway20484• 6 years ago

Good luck collecting on the new CPU they owe you

dayjobpork4• 6 years ago

Australian Consumer Law would make Dell liable for damages if anyone bought a computer from them that damaged a CPU by design. I don't even think that having a warning attached would be a sufficient shield, because it's impossible to 100% guarantee that an end user fully comprehends the consequences of a computer that is designed to permanently alter how their CPU functions.

ColanR• 6 years ago

It'll be interesting to see the legal fallout from this, as purposely breaking customer owned gear is not going to end well.

IANAL; I wonder if this would be grounds for a class-action lawsuit in the future. Something like suing the motherboard manufacturers to replace every CPU their boards have broken by this method.

jhallenworld• 6 years ago

I thought this type of system would provide a way to revert to factory defaults with a side effect of erasing all keys. So the processor would no longer be secure, but would at least still boot. Maybe this clearing can be done through the BIOS/UEFI on the original Dell system.

bubblethink4• 6 years ago

How many exploits/breaches in the wild due to open s3 bucket, default admin passwd to database, poorly written webshit code, plaintext password, etc. ? And how many prevented by secure boot, boot guard, memory encryption, ME, PSP etc. ? Other than obvious money reasons for Dell, people seem to be vastly overestimating their threat models. And even for the secure chain of trust, there are ways to do so where the owner has the key, not the vendor. See heads for example.

sedatk3• 6 years ago

Or, those scenarios just don't make the news as frequent as script kiddie stuff. We only learned about what NSA has been up to because Snowden happened.

bubblethink4• 6 years ago

This is the opposite lesson to take away from Snowden's revelations. You want more user control, not less.

young_unixer• 6 years ago

If I want to protect against the NSA I'm worried about them using Intel ME, AMD PSP and other black boxes to hack me. I don't worry that much about them sneaking into my data center or house and physically changing my hardware.

The security you lose from having a black box in your CPU is much greater than the security you win by virtue of being (theoretically) protected against unsigned bootloaders and rogue hardware.

argb11• 6 years ago

Although a PSP flaw is very unlikely to harm an individual user, it puts the US and it's intellectual property at risk from foreign actors such as Russia or China. And many engineering firms do not have the resources of the NSA to protect against such threats.

Additionally, a PSP or Intel ME related hack involving a SCADA system would not be discovered until it's too late, with potentially extremely severe consequences. AMD is advertising the processor as being a security device that is intended to enhance system security. If such a SCADA hack involving the PSP was to result in loss of life for example, what would AMD's liability be in such circumstances, where the 'security device' itself has enabled the system to be hacked in the first place? Taking into account that the 'security device' cannot be disabled by the SCADA operator, so they have no choice to use it.

That is why I believe the PSP and ME should be removed completely. Should that not be possible it should be replaced with a processor that is transparent to its internal operation.

dayjobpork4• 6 years ago

This is bullshit. Unless it clearly says at boot 'continuing will permanently prevent your CPU from being used in a non Dell computer y/n?' they are asking for a lawsuit for damaging hardware

dayjobpork4• 6 years ago

In fact Australian Consumer Law flat out holds them liable for costs due to problems a seller could have reasonably foreseen

elmo2you2• 6 years ago

Do consumer laws apply to businesses in Australia? Because afaik, in the EU regretfully a lot of laws that protect consumers against abuse from vendors, do not apply to B2B/enterprise transactions.

On the other hand, there have been people who have warned about the dangers of CPU vendors putting Management Engines in their products, which are outside of the control of end users (by design). One of those concerns was the ability to rig sales or even kill off second hand markets markets all together. Apparently, this have already become a reality now.

I'm not surprised it's sold as security feature, just as terrorism and child pornography have been magic words in other fields. But at the end of the day, vendors stand to substantially increase their control on sales and with it their profits, with features that may only be significant in edge cases. That smells a lot like an antitrust issue to me. That all vendors are likely try to move in this same direction, as an opportunity to make more profit, doesn't make it any less devious. All the more reason for antitrust investigators to start looking into this.

yk• 6 years ago

I can think of two scenarios where this security feature is helpful.

First, somebody breaks into a server room, replaces the motherboard with a compromised one, and notices mid replacement that they forgot a processor. (Since the processor locks during first boot, it is of no use if the supply chain is compromised before the first boot. On the other hand, I would imagine somebody willing to break into a data center to replace a motherboard would also be willing to do all kinds of other shenanigans, like bringing another processor.)

The second scenario is, somebody thinks about buying a used instead of an new processor.

skinner927• 6 years ago

Bingo. It’s a money grab.

It’s actually easier to swap a mobo with a cpu and heatsink that’s already seated.

mmis10002• 6 years ago

Well, the security key of VM is stored in the CPU, so you can't replace CPU unless you can enter the console, copy the data out and re-encrypt it with key from another CPU.

While if you can do this, you don't need to replace mother board/CPU anyway because you already pwned them and copy/modify the data whatever you want.

Dylan168079• 6 years ago

Well, the security key of VM is stored in the CPU

What security key? Do you mean the memory encryption key? We're talking about a powered off machine, so that's irrelevant.

rasz5• 6 years ago

This sounds reasonable. I mean to bypass this lock our criminal would have to ... replace the CPU and continue attack like nothing happened. Totally infeasible, inconceivable even! proving this was introduced for safety and not Vendor_lock-in!!!1

mikedilger• 6 years ago

This would be better if there were a physical-only method to factory reset the CPU, instead of blowing fuses.

zwaps• 6 years ago

Sorry to be blunt, but am I correct that this is a measure against tampering with servers by Chinese intelligence during the customs process? In that case, are the CPUs themselves signed or could they be replaced after modifying the motherboard?

Because otherwise it's really hard why the website would claim that every end user would be enthused about these lock-ins. Sort of weird statement.

caf4• 6 years ago

No, it's about stopping BIOS-level rootkits from being installed when someone remotely compromises the machine.

rasz5• 6 years ago

No, its about shutting down secondary server hardware market.

kaspar030• 6 years ago

I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.

intricatedetail3• 6 years ago

It should be illegal to lock devices like that. Pure corporate greed. It is sad that as soon as AMD restored its glory they gone for a cheap cash grab. It should be easy to tell that device is running unsigned boot loader without blocking it (e.g. a jumper on the motherboard). If attacker is able to switch a jumper, then you have bigger problems than a boot loader. Community should nip this in the bud and out AMD.

tifadg1• 6 years ago

Did you even read the article? AMD is shipping everything unlocked, it's the OEMs that can choose to active this feature.

Certainly it's a debate whether such feature should exist in the first place, but presumably OEMs are the driving force behind this, so they see a need.

intricatedetail3• 6 years ago

AMD has created this "feature" out of greed.

tgsovlerkhgsel2• 6 years ago

This is the work of AMD together with the OEMs.

AMD wins because it destroys the secondary market, driving up the prices they can charge for new CPUs.

The OEMs win because once you've put your CPUs into Dell servers, you can't just buy different servers and move your CPUs over (e.g. to reuse CPUs from servers that broke in other ways or were decomissioned for other reasons), so you have a higher hurdle when switching to a competitor. Payment from AMD could also be involved, because I think AMD has more to win here.

You as a CPU buyer, or a buyer of services that cost more if CPUs cost more (aka everything), lose, as does the environment.

bserge• 6 years ago

How soon can we expect them to just use soldered BGA chips on desktops and servers?

Works really well for laptops - motherboard fried? Just throw that CPU, GPU, RAM and VRAM away, and buy a new one! You're not rich enough to pay for its repair, are you?

Justified by thinness for consumers and security for corporate. What a terrible practice.

intricatedetail3• 6 years ago

Maybe it was the case few years ago, but now the rework equipment is quite affordable. It is certainly within hobbyist reach now to e.g replace BGA chip. That's why they rather go into "security" excuse as this sort of stuff cannot be easily bypassed.

nottorp2• 6 years ago

I don't understand what this secures, with the exception of Dell's profit.

If it locks the CPU to a certain manufacturer, all an attacker has to do is get an identical new system and swap the CPUs.

Besides, what matters is the data on the storage. Is it encrypted with keys stored on the CPU? If it's not, how does this help?

stingraycharles• 6 years ago

I may be wrong, but as far as I understand the most likely scenario it protects against is a tampered bootloader. Someone could inject malware in there and then the whole chain of trust of secure computing breaks.

nottorp2• 6 years ago

Ok, that makes sense.

What does not make sense is that it's not optional.

tgsovlerkhgsel2• 6 years ago

If this was about actual security, not destroying the secondary market, the obvious solution for this would be providing a way to "factory reset" the CPU using a pin that is normally physically disconnected.

An attacker that breaks into your datacenter to physically reset the CPU could also swap it, so once you have physical access, the security argument doesn't hold. OEMs/recyclers could simply plug each CPU into a testing/resetting jig that has this connected, or mainboards could have a jumper for it.

Disgusting.

Edit: I wonder if this will enable a new category of ransomware. "Pay us (half the current value of your CPUs) to get your firmware signed with the key that we just locked all the CPUs in your fleet to".

ksec• 6 years ago

If you dont provide this, Enterprise Vendor wont be buying AMD CPU, and AMD lose. ( They desperately need those EPYC Sales )

If they do, lots of people, whether they will buy it or not, will complain and make a big fuss about it. If they are going with Vendor lock they might as well go back to Intel.

Looks like AMD just cant Win.

_kbh_• 6 years ago

I honestly don't see why the CPUs couldn't from the factory contain a public key from AMD, and from there AMD issues certificates to firmware vendors to sign their firmware with. This would allow the CPU to 'verify' the certificate chain of the firmware that is being used without locking it to a specific vendor. This decreases security a little because the leakage of a single signing certificate means you can malicious firmware on any device but it seems like its much more consumer friendly.

argb11• 6 years ago

These kind of DRM-like 'security' features starting being implemented first with phones and consoles and then has spread throughout the entire industry like a cancer.

Many of the features of the AMD PSP could be implemented as hardwired logic, no need for a CPU for that. And thus no chance of malware being able to run undiscovered.

It's like Orwellian doublespeak, in fact the Platform Security Processor might well be making the entire system less secure. Because we cannot inspect the content of the eFuse ROM how do we know if a state level adversary has placed code in there to weaken the system security?

Note: On the nVidia Tegra platform the eFuse ROM can contain executable code to patch the boot-up process, as Nintendo has done with the Switch console. It's likely that AMD has such similar functionality.

So the PSP could be cracked, and then CPUs can be eFused with malware before shipping the server, and nobody would know that there's an easily exploitable vulnerability now present.

I guess one of the real purposes of the PSP is to protect AMD's security and prevent the user from unlocking disabled cores, boosting clock frequencies, retrieving HDCP keys, etc. on both CPUs and GPUs. So it's partly to prevent the owner from doing what they want with the hardware.

argb11• 6 years ago

AMD should realize they are tarnishing their own brand reputation with the inclusion of the PSP and the recent CPU lockdown.

Even though it's a server CPU that's affected by the lockdown, stories like this are definitely not well received by the enthusiast and gamer communities and draw attention to such anti-features like the PSP. Knowing that there's a special processor inside the CPU specifically designed to prevent you from unlocking cores, etc. would NOT be good PR for AMD at all. I am using a Ryzen system right now and I regret buying it, I wish I went with Intel instead. At least the management engine has been cracked, unlike AMD's AFAIK.

It's about time we looked into a legal response to this behavior, just as with John Deere farm equipment, it will likely not stop unless fines are imposed or some kind of consumer boycott occurs.

Regarding the CPU lockdown, even Intel wouldn't do such a thing. Surely isn't it anti-competitive to lock the CPU to a specific system in this way? What would the EU think about this regarding e-waste and recycling? And I believe in Australia the ACCC would crack down very hard on such shenanigans?

argb11• 6 years ago

AMD, you removed the TrueAudio block from your older Radeon GPUs, couldn't you cut the PSP and implement some of its functionality using logic instead of a CPU? So the first thing to boot will be an x86 core, as it did in the old days. A physical jumper can be used to disable the security functions and remote attestation (to a server on the LAN) can be used to determine if CPUs are running in secure mode or not? Thus satisfying the needs of corporate users?

Removing the PSP will eliminate the negative PR it creates together with the associated security risk of having a secret part of the CPU where malware can hide.

On GPUs HDCP functionality can be implemented with ROM-based microcontrollers as it did on older hardware?

bubblethink4• 6 years ago

Amidst all the hype for firmware security, one point missing in these discussions is how many points of failure these guys have added. 1) Intel/AMD for ME/PSP 2) Dell for bios signing keys 3) MS for secureboot keys 4) American Megatrends, Phoenix, etc., companies that people don't even know exist, who actually write the bios code. If the threat model is nation state attacks, there is plenty of surface area here in the circus.

the8472• 6 years ago

Why does this require to blow fuses? Just store a secret into the CPU that can only be unset if the same secret is provided again. It could be totally reversible, as long as you know the secret, that way the lock could be removed when decommissioning the system.

With a tiny bit more fancy crypto one could also generate per-system unlock keys so that a vendor doesn't have to reveal his master lock or something like that.

Unlocking bootloaders is a solved problem on android. Why introduce a worse solution that creates vendor lock-in?

teddyh• 6 years ago

Why introduce a worse solution that creates vendor lock-in?

Obviously in order to create vendor lock-in.

mleonhard3• 6 years ago

Manufacturers push the term "gray market" to imply that resold goods are somehow bad and people who sell them are participating in something like an illegal black market. Reselling equipment is a normal part of doing business. There's nothing gray about it.

There is no separate market for new products that have been bought from manufacturers and resold. It's just one market. We don't need to refer to something that doesn't exist, so we don't need a special term for it.

The term "gray market" is linguistic manipulation to benefit manufacturers at the expense of customers, society, and the environment. Let's stop using the term.

For products that have been used, we have a "second-hand market".

speleding2• 6 years ago

In Europe there is indeed a market for new products that have been bought from manufacturers and resold right away, that's what's called a grey market. This happens because suppliers tend to use different pricing in countries with a different purchasing power, in order to extract more consumer surplus.

It's not uncommon that if you buy the cheapest product in a webshop in Northern Europe you will find it has a Polish user manual when it arrives. It's not illegal to do that (although suppliers would probably like it to be).

The same happens with servers, just compare USD and EUR prices on the Dell website.

hvidgaard2• 6 years ago

It should not be considered a grey market. But it should be considered illegal to grossly vary prices inside the EU region. It's an extremely anti consumer practice and all it does is, as you say, extract more money from the consumers.

Xelbair2• 6 years ago

It is called arbitrage in finance if i recall right.

And what should be illegal is pricing things with such huge differences between regions in same market, or have the same brand's product have grossly different quality/composition between regions.

dangerface2• 6 years ago

In Europe there is indeed a market for new products that have been bought from manufacturers and resold right away.

These businesses are called suppliers there is nothing grey / illegal / dodgy about the business model of suppliers.

thelastname• 6 years ago

Common market, hell yeah! And when they are "exporting" goods outside of Poland they get their VAT back(0% VAT). Really cute.

nabla92• 6 years ago

Definition of gray market

Merrian-Webster: a market employing irregular but not illegal methods especially : a market that legally circumvents authorized channels of distribution to sell goods at prices lower than those intended by the manufacturer https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gray%20market

Investopedia: A grey market is a market in which goods have been manufactured by or with the consent of the brand owner but are sold outside of the brand owner's approved distribution channels—an activity that can be perfectly legal. In the securities markets, a grey market is a market wherein a company's shares are traded before they are issued in an initial public offering (IPO). https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/greymarket.asp

Wikipedia: A grey or gray market (sometimes confused with the similar term "parallel market")[1][2] refers to the trade of a commodity through distribution channels that are not authorized by the original manufacturer or trade mark proprietor. Grey market products (grey goods) are products traded outside the authorized manufacturer's channel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_market

Conclusion: Grey market seems to be the correct term.

re-actor• 6 years ago

The question is not "Does the term grey market have a meaning?" the question posed was "Is the use of the term perpetuating an unhealthy view of commerce to advantage manufacturers?".

After you've been sold a product, the manufacturer has no authority on how you use it or where you resell it. Since the manufacturer doesn't have this authority they you can't be legally circumenvting authorized channels when reselling it.

There is nothing "gray" about second hand.

jasode4• 6 years ago

Manufacturers push the term "gray market" to imply that resold goods are somehow bad [...] The term "gray market" is linguistic manipulation to benefit manufacturers at the expense of customers, society, and the environment. Let's stop using the term.

From my experience reading manufacturers' warnings[1] about this, they never use the phrase "gray market" because a lot of consumers don't understand what that terminology means. It's more that the dealers/retailers and some savvy consumers use the phrase "grey market".

There is a category of _new_ (not used) products that have the following attributes:

- sold by unauthorized dealer : i.e. no contractual relationship with the original manufacturer to buy from them and then resell the item

- sold without a manufacturer's warranty : any warranty must be honored by the unauthorized reseller or some other 3rd party or comes with no warranty at all

So instead of the cumbersome long-winded hyphenated term of "unauthorized-retailer-and-no-manufacturer-warranty market", the industry just shortens it to "gray market". It's a useful label of what the product is. You're right, it's not unlawful or unethical to sell unauthorized/unwarranted merchandise as long you inform the customers.

E.g. Most of the luxury watches sold on amazon.com (Cartier, Rolex, etc) are "gray market" because they don't come with manufacturer's warranty. If you buy a Cartier watch from Amazon[2] to save money and it's broken and needs repair, you can't take it into a Cartier retailer at the mall to have them fix it. There's nothing wrong with it as long as customers understand the tradeoffs of lower price vs service convenience. Even though the watches are genuine instead of counterfeit, they don't come with manufacturer's documentation to get factory-authorized service.

[1] one example of a manufacturer warning about "gray market" without ever using that terminology: https://usa.yamaha.com/support/unauthorized_sellers/index.ht...

[2] https://www.amazon.com/s?k=cartier+ladies+watch&s=price-desc...

mleonhard3• 6 years ago

In places with decent consumer protection laws (like California), manufacturers must honor warranties regardless of who you bought the product from.

The term "unauthorized dealer" is another word to stop using. In a free market, everyone is authorized to buy & sell every safe product at all times.

dade_• 6 years ago

Generally this is a reference related with channel partners, who are usually contractually restricted from selling used products or selling new products to other companies that intend to resell the product. For end customers, it is fine, except that enrolling in a new support contract from the manufacturer many have conditions or not be possible.

microcolonel• 6 years ago

Isn't buying goods to resell them just called retail ?

Enabling retail is a massive part of U.S. property and commercial law, this is how Blockbuster was able to do business.

oliwarner2• 6 years ago

Grey markets might not be a real, standalone market, but they do describe real side-effects of a non-conventional supply chain.

Take grey market cameras. They're are often bought as kits from Asian markets, broken up into lenses and camera bodies and sold on "as new" in western markets but with no support direct from eg Nikon if it goes wrong. Warranty support is from the reseller only. They may ship your unit back to China for support, or repair/replace it at their cost.

So no, these are important differences for customers to recognise. Let's keep using it.

dangerface2• 6 years ago

they do describe real side-effects of a non-conventional supply chain.

Thats just the thing they don't there is nothing unconventional about suppliers acting as middlemen and setting their own price. To pretend this is a problem is unconventional and anti consumer.

AstralStorm• 6 years ago

One time programmable fuses are rather terrible. I'd rather have an old UV resettable fuse that would also clear the key space. Or perhaps a set of contacts to reset the fuse, like a jumper or lands that should be connected with a pencil.

hlandau• 6 years ago

So this basically seems like the AMD equivalent of Intel Boot Guard, except that the keyfusing seems to be done on the CPU, not the PCH.

What I'm hearing here is that Dell, HP, etc. are designing their firmware to keyfuse any unfused CPU it sees to their firmware automatically, silently, and without any prompting whatsoever. And that AMD apparently has no problem with this.

In no way, shape or form is this a reasonable design. A boot prompt before basically quasi-destroying (for many purposes) a CPU would be the only reasonable thing to do. "This operation is irreversible and will render the CPU unusable in other machines", etc.

I'm wondering if Dell etc. could be sued for this.

Outside of x86, IBM POWER10 is making a push for enhanced security, so the will need to have a silicon root of trust to enable their security feature set.

If this were true, this would make POWER10 dead-on-arrival in terms of being something Raptor is willing to ship. Comments made by Raptor don't suggest this and suggest they will be able to ship POWER10 eventually, so it doesn't seem likely.

Keyfusing is an excessively brittle technology, can't support key rollover (you're stuck with one key forever, or at best can change it only a couple of times, depending on the size of OTP), and is basically unusable for owner controlled (not vendor controlled) secure boot.

pantalaimon2• 6 years ago

Manufacturers could also use this to segment their product lines, i.e. prevent you from running a 'server' CPU in a workstation by using different keys or only use different keys for a 'value' line of products.

johncolanduoni2• 6 years ago

They already do this by binning and different sockets; for the CPU manufacturers themselves I think this problem is already solved.

clinta4• 6 years ago

Having such a prompt doesn't really alleviate any of the concerns in this article. I still have to worry about that when buying a second hand CPU, except now I'm even less sure, because sure the CPU came out of a Dell, but maybe the owner never fused it.

R0b0t15• 6 years ago

If the CPU doesn't perform as advertised you can always return it. The only hope here may be putting enough pressure on Dell and whoever else to make their components worthless on the second hand market.

I've been involved in more than one purchasing decision where the ability to resell the parts was factored into the sticker price.

R0b0t15• 6 years ago

It makes me wonder if you have a case for demanding a new CPU from Dell, et al, if you unknowingly put a CPU on one of their boards. You do, as far as I can tell.

zx2c4• 6 years ago

Regarding Raptor...

https://www.talospace.com/2020/08/power10-sounds-really-grea...

https://www.talospace.com/2020/07/condor-cancelled.html?m=1#...

Were there ever any updates to that rather pessimistic blog post?

devit• 6 years ago

That seems absurd, why not just clear the secure area (or make it inaccessible until cleared) if the processor detects a different firmware instead of not booting?

Looks like they might be doing this intentionally to get some sort of financial gain: perhaps the plan is that this would lead to less used AMD chips being resold and thus more AMD chips bought from AMD itself and more profit for AMD?

Even then, why would Dell play along? Is AMD contractually forcing them to create a firmware that locks the chips? What about the massive liability of customers demanding refunds or suing them because the Dell firmware irreparably damaged their CPUs?

dboreham• 6 years ago

"Vendor-Locks" perhaps?

oneplane• 6 years ago

This is just waiting to be abused. No software or firmware (or even silicon!) is 100% secure; if at any point someone figures out a way to flip a fuse (maybe something like creating a short by overloading two adjacent fuses or abusing reads via power supply gliching) and then make the CPU unusable for everyone...

Hell, next step might be ransomware that fuses your CPU and unless you pay them they will reboot them so you can't use them any more until you buy their signing key.

parliament32• 6 years ago

I'm looking forward to the malware/ransomware that permanently locks CPUs to an attacker-signed BIOS.

virgulino2• 6 years ago

The article was updated with new info from HPE:

"HPE does not use the same security technique that Dell is using for a BIOS hardware root of trust. HPE does not burn, fuse, or permanently store our public key into AMD processors which ship with our products. HPE uses a unique approach to authenticate our BIOS and BMC firmware: HPE fuses our hardware – or silicon – root of trust into our own BMC silicon to ensure only authenticated firmware is executed. Thus, while we implement a hardware root of trust for our BIOS and BMC firmware, the processors that ship with our servers are not locked to our platforms. (Source: HPE)"

AMD PSB Vendor Locks EPYC CPUs for Enhanced Security at a Cost

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