AMD silently removes memory encryption from consumer Ryzen CPUs

I had this enabled as it protects against RAMbleed/ECC errors, so it's not limited to physical attacks.

This was never marketed as a feature of the consumer CPUs and if some malignant actor does get physical access to my (consumer) hardware, then them being able to read out bytes through cryo-freezing the RAM really isn't high up on the list of things I'm going to worry about.

If it can be silently removed was it a security feature?

Whilst I hate companies paying engineers to make things worse just to segment their market; I am not really seeing this as an important feature outside the data-center? If an evil-maid has hardware access they hack the USB and/or PCI not the RAM surely?

I would be fine with this if it meant CPUs became slightly cheaper, but we know that's not going to happen.

And there's been talk that now the so-called "AI companies" will start using more CPUs as well, due to "personal agentic agents", so I hope that people won't be priced out of CPUs too...

I'm curious about Denuvo's opinion on that.

Any idea what's happening? This sounds _bad_.

Hint: NSA said no.

It's a shame there is no software-based memory encryption included in the linux kernel. Especially cloud providers can easily snoop all your keys and you have zero recourse.

Another example on how AMD is hardly the good guys.

This will be re-added in a few years. The current flip-flop is just enshittification.

It is sad that once again we will be exposed to more criminals trying to steal our data. Memory encryption not only allows to secure memory from physical "cold RAM", but also prevents loss of encryption keys as it hides the content during transfer.

For what it's worth, RAM encryption belongs to professional SKUs. It's the right business decision that should have been made from from the very beginning.

For most consumer users, RAM encryption primarily adds power consumption and heat generation while providing little practical benefit. They simply don't face many of the threat vectors and attack scenarios that certain industries and enterprise environments must contend with.