A newly discovered AMD CPU vulnerability may affect PS5 consoles

CVE-2023-20558 (Severity: High)

Insufficient control flow management in AmdCpmOemSmm may allow a privileged attacker to tamper with the SMM handler potentially leading to an escalation of privileges.

CVE-2023-20559 (Severity: High)

Insufficient control flow management in AmdCpmGpioInitSmm may allow a privileged attacker to tamper with the SMM handler potentially leading to escalation of privileges.

Both issues are related to the SMM handler found in AMD Ryzen CPUs. The SMM or System Management Mode is a "special-purpose operating mode provided for handling system-wide functions like power management, system hardware control, or proprietary OEM designed code. It is intended for use only by system firmware (BIOS or UEFI), not by applications software or general-purpose systems software."

The SMM is used for implementing power management and hardware control features like Advanced Power Management and it also manages system safety functions like shutdowns at high CPU temperatures.

The special operating mode can be abused to run high-privileged rootkits to run exploits and other security hacks, which is why it's often the target of malicious rootkits and exploits.

Hackers may exploit these new High Severity issues in combination with other previously known vulnerabilities. Users can prevent these sorts of attacks by regularly keeping the system BIOS updated as these can address security threats.

Hopefully, Sony will release a firmware update to address such issues. If your PC is running on an AMD Ryzen processor, it would be best to check for BIOS updates the next time you log on.