Downfall Attacks
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Downfall Attacks
1–10 of 349 posts
Re: Downfall Attacks
#2This is a huge performance hit - up to 50% it is claimed!
70% of modern intel processors are affected apparently as well.
Re: Downfall Attacks
#3Geez! This seems like a _really_ big attack vector. Anyone on the security side have some caveats?
Re: Downfall Attacks
#4From FAQ:
[Q] How long have users been exposed to this vulnerability?
[A] At least nine years. The affected processors have been around since 2014.
Amazing how these vulnerabilities sit around unnoticed for years and then it takes two weeks for someone to code up an exploit.
Re: Downfall Attacks
#5From FAQ: [Q] How long have users been exposed to this vulnerability? [A] At least nine years. The affected processors have been around since 2014. Amazing how these vulnerabilities sit around unnoticed for years and then it takes two weeks for someone to code up an exploit.
I have a feeling the time spent searching for the vulnerability in the first place was more than 2 weeks though.
Re: Downfall Attacks
#6This is a huge performance hit - up to 50% it is claimed! 70% of modern intel processors are affected apparently as well.
> some workloads may experience up to 50% overhead
They word there are "some workloads", I suspect that performance hit is rare.
Re: Downfall Attacks
#7Geez! This seems like a _really_ big attack vector. Anyone on the security side have some caveats?
If I'm reading this right, the caveat is that the exploit only lets you read registers that have been saved for context-switching.
So, in order to extract data, that data must be in constant active use (i.e. loaded in a register) at the time of the attack.
Re: Downfall Attacks
#8Ouch, I wander if they received a bug bounty from Intel for this...
Re: Downfall Attacks
#9Geez! This seems like a _really_ big attack vector. Anyone on the security side have some caveats?
If I'm reading this right, the caveat is that the exploit only lets you read registers that have been saved for context-switching. So, in order to extract data, that data must be in constant active use (i.e. loaded in a register) at the time of the attack.
Would environmental variables be something that shows up in context-switching?
Re: Downfall Attacks
#10I'm getting annoyed with all of these yawning security holes in Intel's CPUs. I'm tempted to replace my Intel MacBook Pro with an Apple Silicon model sooner than I normally would.