The Briefing Room
General Category => Science, Technology and Knowledge => Computers => Topic started by: Elderberry on March 08, 2019, 04:58:12 am
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ZDNet By Liam Tung | March 5, 2019
Researchers say Intel won't be able to use a software mitigation to fully address the problem Spoiler exploits.
Researchers have discovered a new flaw affecting all Intel chips due to the way they carry out speculative execution for CPU performance gains.
Like the Spectre and Meltdown attacks revealed in January 2018, Spoiler also abuses speculative execution in Intel chips to leak secrets.
However, it targets a different area of the processor called the Memory Order Buffer, which is used to manage memory operations and is tightly coupled with the cache.
Researchers from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Massachusetts, and the University of Lübeck in north Germany detail the attack in a new paper, 'Spoiler: Speculative load hazards boost Rowhammer and cache attacks'. The paper was released this month and spotted by The Register.
The researchers explain that Spoiler is not a Spectre attack, so it is not affected by Intel's mitigations for it, which otherwise can prevent other Spectre-like attacks such as SplitSpectre.
More: https://www.zdnet.com/article/all-intel-chips-open-to-new-spoiler-non-spectre-attack-dont-expect-a-quick-fix/ (https://www.zdnet.com/article/all-intel-chips-open-to-new-spoiler-non-spectre-attack-dont-expect-a-quick-fix/)
I've only used AMD CPUs for a long time now.
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I've only used AMD CPUs for a long time now.
Me too. AMD are vastly cheaper, and use a lot less power (= less heat = less fan noise).
It's probably time to take a long look at ARM, for me at least.
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Seriously?