Hidden Debug Mode Found In AMD Processors

An anonymous reader writes "A hidden (and hardware password protected, by means of required special values in processor registers) debug mode has been found in AMD processors, and documented by a reverse engineer called Czernobyl on the RCE Forums community today. It enables powerful hardware debugging features long longed for by reverse engineers, such as hardware data-aware conditional breakpoints, and direct hardware 'page guard'-style breakpoints. And the best part is, it's sitting right there in your processor already, just read the details and off you go with the debugging ninja powers!"

Comments

Hidden?

[Janek Kozicki]

I always supported AMD for being cheap and open, directly approaching people. Now I'd like to know why this nice feature was hidden? Is it dangerous by enabling more powerful rootkits? I'm not going to believe that M$ wanted this hidden, or that they knew about it. So, why hidden? It helps developers a lot.