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A comment on AMD PSB Vendor Locks EPYC CPUs for Enhanced Security at a Cost. Parent comment

Re:AMD PSB Vendor Locks EPYC CPUs for Enhanced Security at a... by numpad0 on Wednesday September 09, 2020 @04:51AM (#24418852)
It’s like an EEPROM that holds major version numbers and debug configurations. If fuse says “major version:20 allow debug: no, allow unsigned: no” and updater is for version 17->18, the user is trying to force a downgrade on a production board. Usually the updater refuses to continue and kernel do the same upon boot. Updater itself is signed and verified so checks are supposed impossible to bypass.

I believe Xbox 360 one was rewritable while Switch one is not. They also require higher voltages than rest of CPU to write. So modders used to modify PCB to block writes or tried to write old values. For Switch they had unrelated nonupdatable boot exploits to bypass signature checks for early batches.

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Re:AMD PSB Vendor Locks EPYC CPUs for Enhanced Security at a... by Dylan16807 on Wednesday September 09, 2020 @05:55AM (#24419273)
Right, but they weren't asking about those normal fuses, they were asking about the special fuse that disables fuse-blowing.

And the simplest answer is that code could check if the fuses are reading out too early a version and abort. Which you could try to patch around but it won't be easy.

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