AMD/ATI Video Drivers: Unsafe At Any Speed

An anonymous reader writes "CERT/CC has called out AMD for having insecure video drivers. AMD/ATI video drivers are incompatible with system-wide ASLR. 'Always On' DEP combined with 'Always On' ASLR are effective exploit mitigations. However, most people don't know about 'Always On' ASLR since Microsoft had to hide it from EMET with an 'EnableUnsafeSettings' registry key — because AMD/ATI video drivers will cause a BSOD on boot if 'Always On' ASLR is enabled."

Comments

AOD

[Kjella]

Acronym Overload Detected. A summary is supposed to summarize but I couldn't tell what this story is about unless I already know.

Re:AOD

[Obfuscant]

Notice that the first reference to ASLR in the summary is actually a link to Wikipedia.

And the reference to EMET is a link to a microsoft page that has at the top this warning:

This article applies to a different operating system than the one you are using. Article content that may not be relevant to you is disabled.

I'm reading this on a linux system, but I manage several windows boxes. It's very useful for microsoft to refuse to diplay content it decides I don't need to see. Thank you.

Re:Crappy AMD drivers?!

[LingNoi]

I never mentioned Nvidia, it's also completely irrelevant as AMD drivers will suck regardless of what Nvidia does.

ASLR

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Preventing yesterday's attacks, tomorrow.

Re:ASLR

[osu-neko]

Given that "yesterday's attacks" compromise 99% of the attacks that occur every day, that seems wise.