Researchers Discover Three New Spectre Variants Immune to Current Mitigations

[Tsing]

Image: Meltdownattack.com



University of Virginia and University of California San Diego researchers have discovered three new variants of Spectre attacks that are immune to current mitigations. They include (1) “a same thread cross-domain attack that leaks secrets across the user-kernel boundary,” (2) a “cross-SMT thread attack that transmits secrets across two SMT threads via the micro-op cache,” and (3) transient execution attacks that have the ability to leak an unauthorized secret accessed along a misspeculated path.” All modern processors from AMD (since 2017) and Intel (since 2011) are reportedly affected due to their use of micro-op caches.



New #Spectre Variants Discovered By Exploiting Micro-op Cacheshttps://t.co/y1toPgoPi5...

Continue reading...

 

[Grimlakin]

That's just perfect. Just effing perfect. Can we get high core count no smt support processors? I mean amd has 64 cores without smt. Can't we leave thst behind and eradicate 85% of these vulnerabilities?

 

[Stoly]

That's just perfect. Just effing perfect. Can we get high core count no smt support processors? I mean amd has 64 cores without smt. Can't we leave thst behind and eradicate 85% of these vulnerabilities?

I guess they could. Specially since there are 64 core cpus now and virtual cores don't make that much of a difference in normal workloads.

 

[Burticus]

Oh joy, more performance crippling "security" firmware coming our way.

 

[Grimlakin]

The only place the extra threads with SMT makes a big impact is for host servers in virtual infrastructures.