alt Hacker News> This means that a malicious attacker on your network, or a nation state that has access to your ISP can easily perform a MITM attack and replace the network response with any malicious executable of their choosing.
I am pretty sure, a nation state wanting to hack an individual's system has way more effective tools at their disposal.
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...such as talking directly to AMD or even Microsoft, which is scarier as Windows Updates are signed, and as long as they can be convinced to sign the right thing, it'll look even more legit.
I am pretty sure nation states hire people smart enough to use whatever works.
What the hell is more effective than getting root with a trivial MITM?
Not only is it effective, it's stealthy, in that it doesn't out you. It's obviously possible to both find and exploit it without a huge investment, which means nobody knows you're a nation state when you use it. You don't have to risk burning any really arcane zero-days or any hard to replace back doors.
Nation states are absolutely going to use things like that. And so is everybody else.
I guess one should keep their eyes out on the next big BGP hijack.
Presumably, all Windows installations running on AMD are auto-executing this auto-update program.