AMD has quietly disabled a critical memory encryption feature on consumer Ryzen processors through a firmware update — and its engineers have gone silent after being pressed for answers.

The feature, called Transparent Secure Memory Encryption (TSME), encrypts everything stored in your computer's RAM using a hardware-generated key that changes on every boot. It protects against cold boot attacks, physical memory theft, and hardware snooping. After AMD's AGESA 1.2.7.0 firmware update, that protection simply vanished on non-Pro Ryzen chips — with no warning, no documentation, and no way for Windows users to even know it was gone.

The Discovery

Privacy-focused Linux user Ben Kilpatrick discovered the change in April 2026 while installing a new operating system on a machine running a Ryzen 7 9700X, part of AMD's Zen 5 architecture. He ran a standard Host Security ID (HSI) audit and found: "encrypted RAM: not supported" — despite having TSME explicitly enabled in BIOS.

How TSME Works