A Backdoor In AMD's Catalyst OpenCL Library?

[FLHerne]

Put my bet down for 'not actually a backdoor; humorously-named test function'.

If you were going to put a top-secret NSA backdoor into your driver, why would you give it such an obvious name? You'd call it osDefinitelyNotABackdoor instead, right?!

[Pseus]

Probably a dumb name for some debug function.

[darkbasic]

It's harder to put backdoors in the firmware and easier to spot compared to a whole driver. FOSS hardware it the next step of course but in the meantime I'm fine with FOSS drivers

[oleid]

Can someone please verify the existence of this string?

Not only does this make the Catalyst driver suspect, it also casts a shadow over the open-source driver. If you remember, AMD pushed *hard* to use a firmware blob in Radeon, instead of the clean-room approach of RadeonHD.

I used to think it didn't matter, but apparently I was naive. Luc Verhaegen was right all along.

I can confirm the existence:

$ nm /usr/lib/libamdocl64.so | grep -i backdoor
000000000074dcf0 t osTestBackdoorATI

Yet, who would lable a symbol for some backdoor "backdor"? This makes it to my list of the dumbest accusations I heard so far

[Annabel]

Stallman was right

What if they have backdoors in the Firmware too? We need open devices, it's sad to see http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...tem&px=MTQ4MDU failed

[darkbasic]

AMD PR already contacted me to let me know they're working on an answer.

I hoped they were working on a solution instead of an answer: migrating all linux fglrx developers to radeon..

[alexThunder]

AMD PR already contacted me to let me know they're working on an answer.

PRs are alway good for a big LOL

[Michael]

AMD PR already contacted me to let me know they're working on an answer.

[zanny]

Let me summarize:
1) Most likely you are Linux user.
2) You considered buying a AMD GPU but not nVidia

This implies:
1) You do not need high end GPU performance
2) You do not need bugfree OpenCL implementation (if you use it at all)

Well, why the hell should you use catalyst then? I use radeon open source drivers every day (r600) and i am completely happy with it. Cities in Motions 2 runs great. :-P

He might just want to support the only dedicated gpu company with a foss driver, even if he isn't using it yet.

[Kemosabe]

I was considering buying an AMD mobo and cpu next upgrade as a means to step away from Intel. There goes that thought.

Let me summarize:
1) Most likely you are Linux user.
2) You considered buying a AMD GPU but not nVidia

This implies:
1) You do not need high end GPU performance
2) You do not need bugfree OpenCL implementation (if you use it at all)

Well, why the hell should you use catalyst then? I use radeon open source drivers every day (r600) and i am completely happy with it. Cities in Motions 2 runs great. :-P