All recent AMD CPUs are affected by the 'Inception' vulnerability

pcgamer.com:

It's been a rough few weeks for CPU vendors as far as security vulnerabilities go. Just days ago, I wrote about the Downfall vulnerability that affects Intel's 6th through to 11th Generation chips, and just as importantly how a patch can dramatically affect performance. Now it's AMD's turn to take some pain.

AMD's Zen 3 and Zen 4 CPUs are affected by what is known as the 'Inception' vulnerability. Like many recent attacks, this one is a side channel attack that can lead to the exposure of otherwise secure data. AMD says its Zen 1 and Zen 2 generations are unaffected.

Our sister site Tom's Hardware wrote about Inception a few days back. Essentially, the exploit is similar to the more well known Spectre attack. It allows a malicious actor to access data stored in memory by taking advantage of the branch prediction features of modern CPUs. This includes things like passwords and security keys.

AMD says malware would be needed to take advantage of the exploit, which it says for now has not happened outside of research circles. Nevertheless, mitigating patches are coming.

Users will have the option of applying a microcode patch or a full AGESA BIOS update. On the consumer side of things, BIOS' for mobile and desktop processors are set to roll out this month. 

Best CPU for gaming: The top chips from Intel and AMD.Best gaming motherboard: The right boards.Best graphics card: Your perfect pixel-pusher awaits.Best SSD for gaming: Get into the game ahead of the rest.

Much like it did after the Downfall patches were released for Intel processors, Phoronix tested Linux kernel and microcode mitigations. The results are very much workload dependent. In the worst case, MariaDB lost over 50% of performance. However, more consumer