According to a study by researchers at the University of Virginia and the University of California, a new attack method has been discovered that can circumvent all existing Specter protections built into Intel and AMD CPU chips. This vulnerability affects millions of devices with Intel and AMD processors.
Critical Specter security vulnerabilities affecting modern processors were first revealed in January 2018. Since it is a security vulnerability that is difficult to fix, it still poses a significant risk for processors. Specter vulnerability causes timing attack (timing side channel). Timing attack; It removes the isolation between different applications and manipulates programs to access random locations in memory. Thus, it uses an optimization method called speculative execution in CPU hardware applications to leak sensitive data. Thanks to the new attack method, the attackers use the side-channel attack method to reveal the confidential data of the people they target. Thanks to this attack, confidential data can be accessed by converting machine instructions into simple commands and taking advantage of the micro-operations cache component, which is the on-chip component that speeds up the calculation.
Micro-process caches are built into Intel-based machines manufactured since 2011.
Researchers explained that microtransaction cache as side-channel has several dangerous consequences. First, it can bypass all techniques that reduce caches as side channels. Secondly, these attacks may not be detected by any existing attack or malware profile, and serious problems may occur.
Security researchers advise users to clear the microtransaction cache and adhere to constant-time programming principles to minimize the effects of the new Spectre vulnerability.
Source:
cs.virginia.edu
thehackernews.com
