Items tagged with spectre
Flaws with speculative execution have been making the rounds in the past few years, with a more recent focus on the Spectre chip flaw and its potentially bypassable mitigations. Following these developments, Intel is now looking at its long-term strategy to protect against transient execution attack methods in the...
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At the start of May, researchers at the University of Virginia announced that current Spectre chip vulnerability mitigations could be bypassed entirely, bringing the ghostly security flaw back to life. Intel has now officially responded by claiming that software coded following its specific security guidance protects...
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Back in 2018, a processor security vulnerability called Spectre appeared, affecting all modern CPU architectures from Intel, AMD, and even ARM in the last 20 years. Since then, major players and semiconductor OEMs have worked hard to patch out the vulnerabilities in a cybersecurity whack-a-mole game, in some cases...
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Intel was raked over the coals three years ago when Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities were first discovered that could affect its consumer and enterprise processors. The company addressed the side-channel exploits with patches and subsequent hardware revisions, but AMD is now coming under the microscope for a...
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You might not have even been aware of this, but last month's Patch Tuesday update for Windows contained a long overdue mitigation for a security flaw in Intel processors. Left upatched, the flaw essentially allows an attacker to bypass fixes that had previously been rolled out to deal with Spectre and Meltdown, the...
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Just when we thought that the worst was over with respect to speculative execution hardware exploits like Spectre, we get hit with another whopper. Such is the case with a new Intel processor vulnerability dubbed Spoiler. Spoiler is similar in concept to Spectre, and was discovered by researchers at the Worcester...
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Where computing is concerned, security should always be a major focus. In 2018, that focus almost seemed overwhelming, thanks in part to the fact that the infamous Spectre and Meltdown security vulnerabilities impacted so many end users and industries. And let's not forget then-Intel CEO Brian Krzanich during his CES...
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Standing out in a sea of excellent laptops is tough nowadays, especially with a metal chassis being the bare minimum point of entry to the premium class. Each company offers its own unique take – Microsoft has Alcantara keyboards, Dell offers super thin screen borders and carbon fiber, Lenovo has fancy hinges and OLED displays, Apple...
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Ever since the Meltdown and Spectre were disclosed earlier this year, the issues surrounding the speculative execution exploits has been multi-pronged. On the one hand, there are concerns that nefarious parties taking advantage of the exploits to compromise unpatched systems. In addition, there have been concerns that...
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Microsoft is pushing out new microcode updates for Intel processors affected by recently disclosed side channel exploits, including several Spectre variants and the newer Foreshadow flaw. The microcode updates apply to Windows 10 and Windows Server, and cover a range of Skylake, Kaby Lake, and Coffee Lake...
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If you thought Spectre and Meltdown were bad, there are new exploits that have the potential to seriously compromise modern Intel processors. The latest class of exploits are called Foreshadow, and were was disclosed today by Intel via a blog post.
The exploit involves Intel's Software Guard Extensions, which is...
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Security conscious computer users might wonder if we will ever fully put Spectre vulnerabilities behind us. Researchers were still discovering new vulnerabilities related to Spectre early this year. Intel is working to protect users from the vulnerability and only a few days ago it announced a patch for side-challenge...
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A newly discovered security vulnerability in modern Intel X86 processors has been revealed that affects the processor's speculative execution technology – like Spectre and Meltdown – and can be used to access sensitive information, including encryption related data. Over the last day or two, patches have quietly...
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Computer users around the world are still reeling from the Spectre flaws that affected many modern ARM and x86-64 CPUs, and earlier this month we learned that there was another Spectre-style vulnerability that could affect processors from Intel, AMD and ARM. Intel and Microsoft have now stepped up and officially...
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New Spectre flaws have been revealed by the former head of Intel's advanced thread team, Yuriy Bulygin. This is a man who knows what he's doing, so his opinions and findings are not to be treated as fly-by-night like some others. Through his new security agency, Eclypsium (a neat name, it must be said), Bulygin posts...
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Just when news of Spectre and Meltdown has seemingly died down, we're now hearing of a fresh round of exploits that might affect Intel processors. A total of 8 new vulnerabilities have been discovered and are being dubbed Spectre Next Generation, or Spectre-NG for short.
Each of the eight vulnerabilities have been...
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In mid-March, Intel announced that it had made tremendous progress in releasing microcode updates to address the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities in its processors. At the time, Intel said that its microcode updates had been distributed for all of its processors released in the past five years.
While Intel's...
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When word finally spread about Spectre and Meltdown, it seemed only a matter of time before attackers would try to leverage the side-channel vulnerabilities. That is not the only concern, however. A team of researchers from the College of William & Mary, University of California Riverside, Carnegie Mellon University...
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It appears that the Spectre-Meltdown nightmare for Intel and its customers is finally nearing resolution. The chip giant has been working overtime to develop and distribute microcode updates for its processors to combat these vulnerabilities, and this morning announced that 100 percent of its processors released in...
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Today is Patch Tuesday, which means that Microsoft is pushing out a slew updates for its wide portfolio of software products. First and foremost, the company is issuing another round of updates to address the Spectre and Meltdown processor vulnerabilities that rocked the computing world back at the start of...
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Attempts to mitigate CPU flaws affecting practically every processor released in the past two decades has not been easy. There is no 'one-size-fits-all' solution to this mess, and some of early attempts to patch CPUs against Spectre and Meltdown only caused more problems, like random reboots. Well, good news if you an...
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Just when you thought the whole Spectre and Meltdown situation could not get any messier, a new report suggests Intel withheld information about the security flaws to US cyber officials, even though it gave some of its hardware partners a heads up before the situation became public knowledge. Intel defends its...
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