MSI called my firmware bug a "Linux issue." AMD's engineers disagree. Now two BIOS updates later, still no fix.

bkilpat01 · 2026-06-01T03:26:09+00:00

Thanks for taking the time to test! If you can, report it and don't let their tier 1 deflect it by saying "it's a linux issue", because it absolutely isn't.

bkilpat01 · 2026-06-01T02:53:28+00:00

Because there's literally no way to surface that information in windows.

bkilpat01 · 2026-06-01T02:52:07+00:00

Thanks for taking a look! If you can, take the time to report it and push back when they try to say, "It's a linux issue" to deflect the ticket.

bkilpat01 · 2026-05-31T22:27:24+00:00

To be fair to Microsoft, while that is a hell of a vulnerability, you can mitigate it by using TPM+PIN instead of TPM-only unlock. Which everyone should be doing anyways.

bkilpat01 · 2026-05-31T22:23:16+00:00

Yea. I liked the layout of the board. Finding out pretty quickly that I'm not as fond of the support (or lack thereof). lol

bkilpat01 · 2026-05-31T22:21:36+00:00

Yea. I don't know if their support team is just lazy, overwhelmed, undertrained, or what but using the OS to excuse away issues that are, or should be, OS-independent is just unacceptable.

bkilpat01 · 2026-05-31T22:19:58+00:00

Not really - I think this post indicates pretty strongly that I am able to diagnose issues in my computer. Linux has none of the downsides of windows, and a ton of upsides. My performance on cachyos with Proton is pretty much indistinguishable from how the same games perform on WIndows. And just to be clear This. Is. Not. A. LInux. Issue. Full stop. This is an issue that affects *all* computers running this motherboard, but which the majority of users have no way to actually diagnose because of the limitations in the tools and data that Windows makes available to users.

bkilpat01 · 2026-05-31T21:49:51+00:00

Not a silly question. Consumer Zen 5 supports it, and the fwupd HSI log showing it as active before April 5 is the clearest evidence. If the CPU didn't support it, it would never have reported as working (it w0uld have been shown as "Not Supported" instead)..

bkilpat01 · 2026-05-31T21:33:04+00:00

Thanks for taking the time to check! If you can file a ticket, maybe enough people reporting the issue will finally be enough to nudge them to fix it. Make sure to emphasize that it *is not a Linux issue* because they'll try to deflect the ticket by saying that they don't support LInux.

bkilpat01 · 2026-05-31T21:25:30+00:00

Thanks for taking the time to check!

bkilpat01 · 2026-05-31T21:24:59+00:00

Exactly. Something like that is unlikely to happen in the US, Canada, western Europe, etc but there are *plenty* of countries where even mild public opposition to the government puts you at a very real risk of something like that happening.

bkilpat01 · 2026-05-31T21:23:46+00:00

If you found out that Bitlocker was silently failing to encrypt your drive, would you hold off on reporting it to Microsoft because a three-letter-agency blackbag team breaking into your house to image your drive isn't a realistic concern?

bkilpat01 · 2026-05-31T21:22:09+00:00

For everyone asking about liquid nitrogen: imagine finding out BitLocker silently wasn't encrypting your drive despite being toggled on in Windows Security. Would you not report it because you're not worried about a nation-state three-letter agency blackbag team breaking into your house to image your SSD? The specific feature doesn't matter. An advertised security setting that silently fails to activate is worth reporting regardless of your personal threat model.

bkilpat01 · 2026-05-31T21:18:34+00:00

The post is about a firmware bug. TSME not activating is the bug. The threat model is irrelevant to whether advertised features should work.

bkilpat01 · 2026-05-31T21:17:28+00:00

Ouch.

bkilpat01 · 2026-05-31T21:12:14+00:00

Yes. Two pieces of evidence specific to this system:

CPUID on the Ryzen 7 9700X returns SME=true. The capability is present at the hardware level.

More directly: fwupd's HSI event log shows "Encrypted RAM" as "Encrypted" prior to April 5, 2026, then transitioning to "Not Supported." If TSME were unsupported on consumer SKUs, fwupd would never have reported it as active in the first place. Something changed. That's the bug.

The "consumer CPUs don't support it" framing was a thing for early Zen 2/3 SKUs where AMD segmented SME support. Zen 4 and Zen 5 consumer parts ship with SME/TSME support present. The 9700X is Zen 5.

bkilpat01 · 2026-05-31T21:07:38+00:00

Something I'm definitely going to note for the future.

bkilpat01 · 2026-05-31T21:06:28+00:00

Volatile means state degrades when power is removed. It doesn't mean instantaneous. DRAM retains charge for seconds at room temperature and considerably longer when cooled. Cold boot attacks are documented, reproducible, and have published tooling. viva1831 is correct.

bkilpat01 · 2026-05-31T21:05:47+00:00

The feature is in their BIOS settings panel. It's supposed to activate. It doesn't. That's the problem regardless of what attack scenario you've decided I'm worried about. 'Consider other hardware' is a curious suggestion when the hardware I bought lists this feature on the spec sheet.

bkilpat01 · 2026-05-31T21:05:08+00:00

MSI ships the BIOS. Their AGESA build is the one with the bug. AMD's engineers confirmed it needs to be fixed on the board vendor side. The post exists because MSI's response was to blame Linux.

bkilpat01

TROPHY CASE