Fighting malware and spam

Enhanced virus protection

Costin Raiu Kaspersky Lab

AMD Athlon 64 CPU Feature:

1. HyperTransport technology
2. Cool'n'Quiet technology
3. Enhanced Virus Protection for Microsoft Windows XP SP2

The AMD64 architecture is an affordable way of getting the power of 64-bit processing into a desktop computer. Interesting enough, AMD has not only designed an improved CPU core and longer registers, but they have also included a feature designed to significantly increase the security of modern operating systems.

The idea of hardware protection isn't new – every contemporary CPU includes at least a basic hardware mechanism for enforcing a security scheme, for instance, those from the Intel x86 family, based on execution rings and page rights.

On a similar note, buffer overflows are not new either. They've been in existence as long as computers have, and still remain a problem. There have been many different fixes, none very successful or popular.

Taking all of this into account, could AMD's newest product turn the tide?

This presentation will look at the steps taken by AMD engineers to include a form of hardware buffer overflow protection in the AMD64 architecture; its effectiveness against known viruses and worms; operating systems which support the AMD64 computing platform, and the differences between AMD64 and Intel's EM64T technology.