PulseAugur
EN
LIVE 21:36:05

Exploit grants hardware-level control over older AMD CPUs

By PulseAugur Editorial · [1 sources] ·

A newly discovered exploit, dubbed Skitter Creek Bath Salts (Skitter), allows for hardware-level control over certain AMD CPUs from 2011-2015. Developed by hacker Christopher Domas, the exploit leverages a single instruction to disable memory mapping, granting access to sensitive areas like the Platform Security Processor (PSP), microcode, and System Management Mode (SMM). While requiring kernel-level access to initiate, the exploit effectively bypasses security protections by manipulating the CPU's bank interleaving feature, known as BankSwizzleMode. AI

RANK_REASON The cluster describes a newly discovered security exploit affecting specific hardware, which falls under research into system vulnerabilities. [lever_c_demoted from research: ic=1 ai=0.1]

Read on Tom's Hardware →

AI-generated summary · Google Gemini · from 1 sources. How we write summaries →

Exploit grants hardware-level control over older AMD CPUs

How we ranked this

Signal score
0 / 100
Composite score across the factors below. Higher = stronger signal that this story matters right now.
Newsworthiness bucket
Tool
The cluster describes a newly discovered security exploit affecting specific hardware, which falls under research into system vulnerabilities. [lever_c_demoted from research: ic=1 ai=0.1]
Source corroboration
Single-source cluster
Only one publisher covered this so far. Single-source stories can still rank when the publisher is high-authority, but they lack cross-source corroboration.
Topics
other
Editorial topic classification. Feeds into how the story surfaces on /topic/<slug> hub pages and into the per-entity coverage mix.
AI-industry relevance
Low
Off-topic or adjacent — cluster remains reachable but doesn't surface in AI-industry rankings.
Story freshness
55 days old
Aged out of breaking-news scoring windows; ranking reflects the durable signal from the full source set.

Full methodology in our editorial standards.

COVERAGE [1]

  1. Tom's Hardware TIER_1 English(EN) · Bruno Ferreira ·

    Just one instruction on AMD's 2015-era CPUs gets you access to Platform Security Processor, microcode, and System Management Interface — exploit for 15h and 16h chip families cracks open secret memory areas

    Just one instruction on AMD CPUs gets you access to Platform Security Processor, microcode, and System Management Interface — exploit for 15h and 16h chip families cracks open secret memory areas

RELATED ENTITIES

RELATED TOPICS