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The RCE that AMD won't fix!

A remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability exists in AMD's AutoUpdate software due to the use of unencrypted HTTP for executable downloads, while the update URL itself is served over HTTPS. This allows for a man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack where a malicious actor could replace the intended executable with a malicious one, which the AutoUpdate software will then execute without validation. AMD has deemed this issue out of scope and will not be providing a fix. There is currently no workaround available.
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The RCE that AMD won’t fix After being interrupted multiple times by an annoying console window that would pop up periodically on my new gaming PC, I managed to track the offending executable down to AMD’s AutoUpdate software. In my anger, I decided to punish this software by decompiling it to figure out how it worked, and accidentally discovered a trivial Remote Code Execution (RCE) vulnerability in the process. The first thing I found, is that they store their update URL in the program’s app.config , although its a little odd that they use their “Develpment” URL in production, it uses HTTPS so its perfectly safe. The real problem starts when you open up this URL in your web browser, and realise that all of the executable download URL’s are using HTTP. This means that a malicious attacker on your network, or a nation state that has access to your ISP can easily perform a MITM attack and replace the network response with any malicious executable of their choosing. I was hoping that AMD perhaps had some form of certificate validation to ensure that it could not download & run any unsigned executables, however a quick look into the decompiled code revealed that the AutoUpdate software does no such validation and immediately executes the downloaded file. After finding this issue, I thought it was worth reporting to AMD since it seemed to be a pretty severe issue. However it turned out to be considered “out of scope”, resulting in AMD not considering this to be a vulnerability. Timeline (DD/MM/YYYY) 27/01/2026 - Vulnerability Discovered 05/02/2026 - Vulnerability Reported 05/02/2026 - Report Closed as wont fix/out of scope 06/02/2026 - Blog published If you liked this blog, you can read another of my write-ups here: 1.4 Billion exposed user records via insecure Firebase instances in top Android apps

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