Rmpocalypse: Breaking Amd Confidential Computing with a Single Write
Key topics
Researchers have discovered a vulnerability in AMD's Confidential Computing feature, allowing an attacker to break the confidentiality and integrity guarantees with a single write operation, sparking discussion on the implications and potential mitigations.
Snapshot generated from the HN discussion
Discussion Activity
Light discussionFirst comment
11m
Peak period
2
2-3h
Avg / period
1.7
Key moments
- 01Story posted
Oct 13, 2025 at 7:49 AM EDT
3 months ago
Step 01 - 02First comment
Oct 13, 2025 at 8:00 AM EDT
11m after posting
Step 02 - 03Peak activity
2 comments in 2-3h
Hottest window of the conversation
Step 03 - 04Latest activity
Oct 13, 2025 at 11:13 AM EDT
3 months ago
Step 04
Generating AI Summary...
Analyzing up to 500 comments to identify key contributors and discussion patterns
Want the full context?
Jump to the original sources
Read the primary article or dive into the live Hacker News thread when you're ready.
In our analysis of the RMP initialization, we observed that the malicious hypervisor running on the x86 cores can still create dirty cachelines pointing to DRAM. [...] As depicted in (c), the malicious hypervisor can use the primitive to get arbitrary unchecked writes to RMP memory.
So it would seem it's easy as long as you managed to install a malicious hypervisor...
Of course not great, with supply chain attacks being a serious cause for concern. Still, hardly "easy" if it requires hijacking a core piece of infrastructure?
If the infrastructure operator is untrusted, as in some models of confidential computing, then hypervisor replacements are both easy and an expected threat.