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AMD has revealed it won’t be rolling out updates patching the Sinkclose vulnerability to older chips.
In a statement, AMD said that some “older products” were “outside our software support window.”
The company has already released updates for a number of processor families, but older chips, including Ryzen 3000 series processors, won’t receive the patch.
Most recent processors have already received the update or are awaiting its arrival, including the latest Threadripper and Ryzen processors and all generations of EPYC processors.
It’s not yet clear whether the latest Ryzen AI 300 and Ryzen 9000 series processors will receive updates, as these may have had the vulnerability addressed at factory stage.
Though AMD is still carrying out tests to figure out how the update impacts system performance, the company said that no impact was expected.
Sinkclose Vulnerability Unlikely to Affect Casual Users
The Sinkclose security flaw affects hundreds of millions of AMD processors dating back to 2006. It allows hackers to infiltrate systems while remaining “nearly undetectable.”
For anyone concerned about Sinkclose with an older chip that won’t be patched by AMD, the only option is to buy a new CPU—and likely a whole new PC.
However, the good news is that casual users needn’t be overly concerned. Because system kernel access is required in order to exploit the Sinkclose vulnerability, which means systems need to already be compromised, it’s more likely that state-sponsored hackers will be the ones behind attacks of this nature.
