GPU hardware manufacturers’ graphics driver updates are often greeted with a certain amount of excitement and skepticism. While some users look forward to the potential game and app support, functionality, or pure FPS a new package might provide, others hesitate, fearing that the problems it can cause may cause more problems than it solves.
AMD’s latest security bulletin also demonstrates how important it is to keep Radeon drivers up-to-date to support their security posture as well as graphics capabilities.
Vulnerabilities are not limited to Radeon series
The latest common vulnerabilities and risks (CVEs’) released by Team Red covers 27 driver-level security findings, including 18 high severity vulnerabilities. Issues caused by security vulnerabilities include unwanted elevation of privileges, DLL hijacking, and arbitrary code execution. Malicious actors that exploit these vulnerabilities can cause user-facing effects ranging from compromised information to the loss of all data.
Fortunately for AMD Radeon users, most of these issues have been fixed with the company’s last few driver releases. Starting with the Radeon 20. 7.1 and Radeon 21. Q1 Enterprise driver packages, AMD was able to significantly mitigate many of these security issues, including all 18 high severity CVEs. These releases and their associated security concerns are also an excellent opportunity for end users to review and evaluate driver updates based on more than efficient data and image processing by their GPUs.
Recently noticed vulnerabilities are not limited to AMD’s Radeon series. According to The Register, it covers more than 70 vulnerabilities involving all generations of AMD’s EPYC processors and Intel’s Wi-Fi, SSDs and processors, including the Pentium, Celeron, Atom and Xeon series. The security issues were discovered and reported by many researchers and organizations, including vulnerability expert Ori Nimron, cybersecurity product developer CyberArk Labs, and others. According to AMD bulletins, “AMD GPU users such as Radeon Software version 21. 4.1, Radeon Pro Software version 21. Q2 Enterprise should be up to date and protected from reported exploits.”
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