Microcode Rolling Out for Newly Discovered Intel Side-Channel Vulnerability

[Peter_Brosdahl]

Image: Intel



It’s been a while since we’ve heard of a new side-channel vulnerability for Intel chips. The latest is something to be concerned about because unlike many others, it can be done remotely without physical access, albeit with effort and skill. DSOG (via Phoronix) has reported on PLATYPUS (Power Leakage Attacks: Targeting Your Protected User Secrets).



Researchers from around the world worked together to discover this new vulnerability, which functions like something out of a spy novel. It has been known that monitoring...

Continue reading...

 

[Grimlakin]

Well **** how much more performance do we loose for patching this one?!

 

[Peter_Brosdahl]

Well **** how much more performance do we loose for patching this one?!

No word on that but I was a thinking that a funny before/after meme, after all these are done and x86 finally becomes secure should show a off-road truck doing something epic and then a unicycle traversing a crosswalk. At this point getting an old x86 that hasn't had any microcode updates could be worth some money just for bench comparison. I imagine they're going to be hard to find after a while.

 

[Grimlakin]

The microcode updates as I understand them are at the BIOS level right?

 

[Peter_Brosdahl]

The microcode updates as I understand them are at the BIOS level right?

Firmware/BIOS I believe. Since coming directly from Intel it would make sense. I haven't actually tried it yet so I don't really know for sure. One thing I saw in the PDF is that this goes all the way back to Sandybridge when RAPL was rolled out. Have to check out Github for more documentation on them. Intel probably has something, somewhere, on their site as well.