University of Virginia School of Engineering and Applied Science. (2021, April 30). Computer scientists discover new vulnerability affecting computers globally. ScienceDaily Citat: "...A team o computer science researchers has uncovered a line of attack that breaks all Spectre defenses, meaning that billions of computers and other devices across the globe are just as vulnerable today as they were when Spectre was first announced...Venkat's team discovered that hackers can steal data when a processor fetches commands from the micro-op cache...Because all current Spectre defenses protect the processor in a later stage of speculative execution, they are useless in the face of Venkat's team's new attacks. Two variants of the attacks the team discovered can steal speculatively accessed information from Intel and AMD processors...This newly discovered vulnerability will be much harder to fix..."Patches that disable the micro-op cache or halt speculative execution on legacy hardware would effectively roll back critical performance innovations in most modern Intel and AMD processors, and this just isn't feasible," Ren, the lead student author, said...The new Spectre variants Venkat's team discovered even break the context-sensitive fencing mechanism outlined in Venkat's award-winning paper. But in this type of research, breaking your own defense is just another big win...", backup
University of Virginia School of Engineering and Applied Science. (2021, April 30). Computer scientists discover new vulnerability affecting computers globally. ScienceDaily Citat: "...A team o computer science researchers has uncovered a line of attack that breaks all Spectre defenses, meaning that billions of computers and other devices across the globe are just as vulnerable today as they were when Spectre was first announced...Venkat's team discovered that hackers can steal data when a processor fetches commands from the micro-op cache...Because all current Spectre defenses protect the processor in a later stage of speculative execution, they are useless in the face of Venkat's team's new attacks. Two variants of the attacks the team discovered can steal speculatively accessed information from Intel and AMD processors...This newly discovered vulnerability will be much harder to fix..."Patches that disable the micro-op cache or halt speculative execution on legacy hardware would effectively roll back critical performance innovations in most modern Intel and AMD processors, and this just isn't feasible," Ren, the lead student author, said...The new Spectre variants Venkat's team discovered even break the context-sensitive fencing mechanism outlined in Venkat's award-winning paper. But in this type of research, breaking your own defense is just another big win...", backup
