AMD Firmware Update Removes Memory Encryption From Consumer Ryzen CPUs

AMD appears to have disabled Transparent Secure Memory Encryption (TSME) on non-Pro Ryzen processors through newer AGESA 1.2.7.0 firmware, leaving the feature reported as unsupported on consumer systems that previously exposed it. Security researcher Ben Kilpatrick traced the change after noticing TSME had disappeared on his Ryzen system, and testing by MSI engineers found the same pattern on MSI and Gigabyte motherboards: older AGESA firmware showed TSME enabled on consumer Ryzen chips, while newer firmware did not. Ryzen Pro processors continued to report TSME support across both motherboard vendors and firmware versions.

AMD has not publicly clarified whether the change was an intentional product restriction or an unintended regression. In responses on AMD’s public engineering GitHub, engineers suggested checking the BIOS setting and escalating unresolved cases to motherboard vendors, while a cited official statement said TSME is part of AMD PRO Technologies and applies only to Pro CPUs. The loss of TSME may reduce defenses against physical memory attacks, including cold-boot attacks, DRAM snooping, and memory extraction from removed modules, and users may have difficulty detecting the change, particularly on Windows systems.