AMD has patched a long list of security vulnerabilities found in its graphics driver for Windows 10, allowing attackers to execute arbitrary code and elevate privileges on vulnerable systems.
See also: AMD launches Instinct MI200 GPUs for HPC and AI workloads
The potential impact and severity of the flaws vary, with AMD marking more than a dozen bugs as high severity.
The security flaws were discovered by independent security researchers Ori Nimron and driverThru_BoB 9th, Eran Shimony of CyberArk Labs, and Lucas Bouillot of Apple Media Products RedTeam.
The full list of fixed bugs includes:
- Ori Nimron (@orinimron123) : CVE-2020-12892, CVE-2020-12893, CVE-2020-12894, CVE-2020-12895, CVE-2020-12897, CVE-202920-2, CVE-2020-201 -2020-12900, CVE-2020-12901, CVE-2020-12902, CVE-2020-12903, CVE-2020-12904, CVE-2020-12905, CVE-2020-12962, CVE-2020-12962, CVE-2020-12903, -12980, CVE-2020-12981, CVE-2020-12982, CVE-2020-12983, CVE-2020-12986, CVE-2020-12987
- Eran Shimony of CyberArk Labs: CVE-2020-12892
- Lucas Bouillot, of Apple Media Products RedTeam: CVE-2020-12929
- driverThru_BoB 9th: CVE-2020-12960
See also: Affinity GPU: Apple M1 Max beats AMD Radeon Pro W6900X
A full list of vulnerabilities found in AMD's graphics driver for Windows 10, and their description, is available in the security advisory published this week.
In early October, shortly after Windows 11 began rolling out, AMD had also warned of significant performance issues on Windows 11-compatible AMD processors, including the latest Ryzen, when using certain applications.
One of the compatibility issues led to increased operational latency of the L3 cache, which had a direct impact on memory subsystem access time for some applications.
While for some of the affected applications the expected performance impact was between 3 and 5%, for eSports games, AMD said customers could see a 10-15% performance reduction on Windows 11.
See also: Windows 11: How to do a factory reset?
The AMD CPU issues were addressed two weeks later with the optional cumulative update KB5006746 for Windows 11 released on October 21.
“Addresses an L3 cache issue that may impact performance in some applications on devices equipped with AMD Ryzen processors after upgrading to Windows 11 (initial release),” Microsoft explained in the release notes.
