I don’t know how many of you have used the Auto-Update feature but starting with early 2013 it will be removed from AMD’s Catalyst Control Center. The cause is a minor security vulnerability that marked the feature for complete removal, instead of fixing it. No further details are given about this security vulnerability.

I for one would have liked to know at what risk I was exposed. One has to wonder how “minor” the issue is if the feature is being completely removed… Until further details you should disable the Auto-Update feature.

AMD will be removing the auto-update notification functionality from versions of AMD Catalyst Control Center running under Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8, beginning in early 2013. Due to a minor security vulnerability in the auto-update notification, users are recommended to update to the latest AMD Catalyst driver release from the amd.com web site. Alternatively, users should (i) uncheck the “Automatically check for updates” option under AMD Catalyst Control Center > Information > Software Update, and (ii) choose to “Skip” notifications from the AMD Catalyst driver, which notifications recommend updating to the latest driver.

http://benchmark3d.com/catalyst-auto-update-feature-to-be-removed

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Most likely not anything to worry about. Maybe if you're stupid enough to open some email which has some attachment which modifies some files the updater could be used to download trojans or give you premature ejaculations or some crap like that. I don't think it's a useful feature myself, as new drivers can cause...undesired operation.

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