Intel and AMD chips are under attack from a new generation of Spectre threats

Date:
Mon, 21 Oct 2024 11:30:05 +0000

Description:
Both companies acknowledged the existence of new flaws and are addressing them.

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It seems as Spectre still haunts Intel and AMD processors after cybersecurity researchers found new working speculative execution attacks.

To improve their performance, modern processors try to guess what tasks to do next. Speculative execution attacks abuse this mechanism to trick the
computer into leaking private information, like passwords or other sensitive data, while its working ahead of time on the wrong guesses.

The most popular attack was called Spectre - first observed in early 2018, together with a sister vulnerability called Meltdown. At the time, it was
said that most computers were vulnerable to Spectre and Meltdown, and the subsequent rush to fix the flaws made an even bigger mess, with some
computers completely bricked as a result. 8BASE and Everest

Now, cybersecurity researchers Johannes Wikner and Kaveh Razavi from ETH Zurich claim that years after Spectre, there are multiple similar attacks
that can work around existing defenses.

Among them are two methods that work on Linux, and affect a wide range of Intel processors (Intels 12th, 13th, and 14th chip generations for consumers, and 5th and 6th generation of Xeon processors for servers), and many AMD
chips (Zen 1, Zen 1+, Zen 2).

The attacks undermine the Indirect Branch Predictor Barrier (IBPB) on x86 processors, it was explained. IBP is pivotal in defending against speculative execution attacks.

In the meantime, the researchers notified both Intel and AMD of their findings, and both companies have acknowledged the existence of the vulnerabilities. In fact, both said they already discovered them and are working on a fix. Intel is tracking it as CVE-2023-38575, and AMD is tracking it as CVE-2022-23824. Intel fixed it with a firmware update released in
March, but according to BleepingComputer, the fix has not yet reached all operating systems.

Via BleepingComputer More from TechRadar Pro Intel CPUs are still vulnerable to Spectre threats Here's a list of the best firewalls today These are the best endpoint protection tools right now



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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/pro/security/intel-and-amd-chips-are-under-attack-fr om-a-new-generation-of-spectre-threats


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