AMD Zen SEV not secure according to security experts

AMD has not yet released the Zen processors but some experts worry that it is actually an insecure chip. Two scientists believe that the security protocol used by Zen is vulnerable to hacks.

There has been no official testing yet but scientists Robert Buhren and Felicitas Hetzelt from the Security in Telecommunications Department at the Technical University in Germany said that Zen could be insecure in theory. The design of the hypervisor, which is the one that controls the resources for virtual machines and cloud computing, is not as secure in the Zen processors.

AMD's own system for securing the hypervisor is called the Secure Encrypted Virtualization (SEV) which has not been shipped yet, Bleeping Computer reported. It has not been examined yet by the information security community and experts are worried that there might be some vulnerabilities and exploits present.

Hetzelt and Buhren studied the design when AMD published the SEV technical documentation in April. They found out three attack channels that hackers can use to compromise a system with the Zen processors.

The malicious hypervisor can actually force a guest machine to permit read and write operations which means that hackers can override commands with their own. They can do so by using a replay attack with captured login data from the actual user.

Researchers will have to test their theories when the Zen finally releases. Speaking of, AMD is set to reveal the new processors in their New Horizon event.

AMD might unveil the 16-core Naples Zen processor with 32 threads, WCCFTech reported. The said chip is just one of the many Zen variants which also includes another 32-core chip with 64 threads.

The new 32-core chip will beat Intel's 24-core server processor but many mainstream users would probably choose the 16-core chip because of its cheaper price tag and practicality. AMD fans will have to wait until the New Horizon event.

Learn more about the AMD Zen processors in the video below: