Transient execution CPU vulnerability

Last updated

Transient execution CPU vulnerabilities are vulnerabilities in which instructions, most often optimized using speculative execution, are executed temporarily by a microprocessor, without committing their results due to a misprediction or error, resulting in leaking secret data to an unauthorized party. The archetype is Spectre, and transient execution attacks like Spectre belong to the cache-attack category, one of several categories of side-channel attacks. Since January 2018 many different cache-attack vulnerabilities have been identified.

Contents

Overview

Modern computers are highly parallel devices, composed of components with very different performance characteristics. If an operation (such as a branch) cannot yet be performed because some earlier slow operation (such as a memory read) has not yet completed, a microprocessor may attempt to predict the result of the earlier operation and execute the later operation speculatively, acting as if the prediction were correct. The prediction may be based on recent behavior of the system. When the earlier, slower operation completes, the microprocessor determines whether the prediction was correct or incorrect. If it was correct then execution proceeds uninterrupted; if it was incorrect then the microprocessor rolls back the speculatively executed operations and repeats the original instruction with the real result of the slow operation. Specifically, a transient instruction [1] refers to an instruction processed by error by the processor (incriminating the branch predictor in the case of Spectre) which can affect the micro-architectural state of the processor, leaving the architectural state without any trace of its execution.

In terms of the directly visible behavior of the computer it is as if the speculatively executed code "never happened". However, this speculative execution may affect the state of certain components of the microprocessor, such as the cache, and this effect may be discovered by careful monitoring of the timing of subsequent operations.

If an attacker can arrange that the speculatively executed code (which may be directly written by the attacker, or may be a suitable gadget that they have found in the targeted system) operates on secret data that they are unauthorized to access, and has a different effect on the cache for different values of the secret data, they may be able to discover the value of the secret data.

Timeline

2018

In early January 2018, it was reported that all Intel processors made since 1995 [2] [3] (besides Intel Itanium and pre-2013 Intel Atom) have been subject to two security flaws dubbed Meltdown and Spectre. [4] [5]

The impact on performance resulting from software patches is "workload-dependent". Several procedures to help protect home computers and related devices from the Spectre and Meltdown security vulnerabilities have been published. [6] [7] [8] [9] Spectre patches have been reported to significantly slow down performance, especially on older computers; on the newer 8th-generation Core platforms, benchmark performance drops of 2–14% have been measured. [10] Meltdown patches may also produce performance loss. [11] [12] [13] It is believed that "hundreds of millions" of systems could be affected by these flaws. [3] [14] More security flaws were disclosed on May 3, 2018, [15] on August 14, 2018, on January 18, 2019, and on March 5, 2020. [16] [17] [18] [19]

At the time, Intel was not commenting on this issue. [20] [21]

On March 15, 2018, Intel reported that it will redesign its CPUs (performance losses to be determined) to protect against the Spectre security vulnerability, and expects to release the newly redesigned processors later in 2018. [22] [23]

On May 3, 2018, eight additional Spectre-class flaws were reported. Intel reported that they are preparing new patches to mitigate these flaws. [24]

On August 14, 2018, Intel disclosed three additional chip flaws referred to as L1 Terminal Fault (L1TF). They reported that previously released microcode updates, along with new, pre-release microcode updates can be used to mitigate these flaws. [25] [26]

2019

On January 18, 2019, Intel disclosed three new vulnerabilities affecting all Intel CPUs, named "Fallout", "RIDL", and "ZombieLoad", allowing a program to read information recently written, read data in the line-fill buffers and load ports, and leak information from other processes and virtual machines. [27] [28] [29] Coffee Lake-series CPUs are even more vulnerable, due to hardware mitigations for Spectre.[ citation needed ] [30]

2020

On March 5, 2020, computer security experts reported another Intel chip security flaw, besides the Meltdown and Spectre flaws, with the systematic name CVE - 2019-0090 (or "Intel CSME Bug"). [16] This newly found flaw is not fixable with a firmware update, and affects nearly "all Intel chips released in the past five years". [17] [18] [19]

2021

In March 2021 AMD security researchers discovered that the Predictive Store Forwarding algorithm in Zen 3 CPUs could be used by malicious applications to access data it shouldn't be accessing. [31] According to Phoronix there's little performance impact in disabling the feature. [32]

In June 2021, two new vulnerabilities, Speculative Code Store Bypass (SCSB, CVE-2021-0086) and Floating Point Value Injection (FPVI, CVE-2021-0089), affecting all modern x86-64 CPUs both from Intel and AMD were discovered. [33] In order to mitigate them software has to be rewritten and recompiled. ARM CPUs are not affected by SCSB but some certain ARM architectures are affected by FPVI. [34]

Also in June 2021, MIT researchers revealed the PACMAN attack on Pointer Authentication Codes (PAC) in ARM v8.3A. [35] [36] [37]

In August 2021 a vulnerability called "Transient Execution of Non-canonical Accesses" affecting certain AMD CPUs was disclosed. [38] [39] [40] It requires the same mitigations as the MDS vulnerability affecting certain Intel CPUs. [41] It was assigned CVE-2020-12965. Since most x86 software is already patched against MDS and this vulnerability has the exact same mitigations, software vendors don't have to address this vulnerability.

In October 2021 for the first time ever a vulnerability similar to Meltdown was disclosed [42] [43] to be affecting all AMD CPUs however the company doesn't think any new mitigations have to be applied and the existing ones are already sufficient. [44]

2022

In March 2022, a new variant of the Spectre vulnerability called Branch History Injection was disclosed. [45] [46] It affects certain ARM64 CPUs [47] and the following Intel CPU families: Cascade Lake, Ice Lake, Tiger Lake and Alder Lake. According to Linux kernel developers AMD CPUs are also affected. [48]

In March 2022, a vulnerability affecting a wide range of AMD CPUs was disclosed under CVE-2021-26341. [49] [50]

In June 2022, multiple MMIO Intel CPUs vulnerabilities related to execution in virtual environments were announced. [51] The following CVEs were designated: CVE-2022-21123, CVE-2022-21125, CVE-2022-21166.

In July 2022, the Retbleed vulnerability was disclosed affecting Intel Core 6 to 8th generation CPUs and AMD Zen 1, 1+ and 2 generation CPUs. Newer Intel microarchitectures as well as AMD starting with Zen 3 are not affected. The mitigations for the vulnerability decrease the performance of the affected Intel CPUs by up to 39%, while AMD CPUs lose up to 14%.

In August 2022, the SQUIP vulnerability was disclosed affecting Ryzen 2000–5000 series CPUs. [52] According to AMD the existing mitigations are enough to protect from it. [53]

According to a Phoronix review released in October, 2022 Zen 4/Ryzen 7000 CPUs are not slowed down by mitigations, in fact disabling them leads to a performance loss. [54] [55]

2023

In February 2023 a vulnerability affecting a wide range of AMD CPU architectures called "Cross-Thread Return Address Predictions" was disclosed. [56] [57] [58]

In July 2023 a critical vulnerability in the Zen 2 AMD microarchitecture called Zenbleed was made public. [59] AMD released a microcode update to fix it. [60]

In August 2023 a vulnerability in AMD's Zen 1, Zen 2, Zen 3, and Zen 4 microarchitectures called Inception [61] [62] was revealed and assigned CVE-2023-20569. According to AMD it is not practical but the company will release a microcode update for the affected products.

Also in August 2023 a new vulnerability called Downfall or Gather Data Sampling was disclosed, [63] [64] [65] affecting Intel CPU Skylake, Cascade Lake, Cooper Lake, Ice Lake, Tiger Lake, Amber Lake, Kaby Lake, Coffee Lake, Whiskey Lake, Comet Lake & Rocket Lake CPU families. Intel will release a microcode update for affected products.

The SLAM [66] [67] [68] [69] vulnerability (Spectre based on Linear Address Masking) reported in 2023 neither has received a corresponding CVE, nor has been confirmed or mitigated against.

2024

In March 2024, a variant of Spectre-V1 attack called GhostRace was published. [70] It was claimed it affected all the major microarchitectures and vendors, including Intel, AMD and ARM. It was assigned CVE-2024-2193. AMD dismissed the vulnerability (calling it "Speculative Race Conditions (SRCs)") claiming that existing mitigations were enough. [71] Linux kernel developers chose not to add mitigations citing performance concerns. [72] The Xen hypervisor project released patches to mitigate the vulnerability but they are not enabled by default. [73]

Also in March 2024, a vulnerability in Intel Atom processors called Register File Data Sampling (RFDS) was revealed. [74] It was assigned CVE-2023-28746. Its mitigations incur a slight performance degradation. [75]

In April 2024, it was revealed that the BHI vulnerability in certain Intel CPU families could be still exploited in Linux entirely in user space without using any kernel features or root access despite existing mitigations. [76] [77] [78] Intel recommended "additional software hardening". [79] The attack was assigned CVE-2024-2201.

In June 2024, Samsung Research and Seoul National University researchers revealed the TikTag attack against the Memory Tagging Extension in ARM v8.5A CPUs. The researchers created PoCs for Google Chrome and the Linux kernel. [80] [81] [82] [83] Researchers from VUSec previously revealed ARM's Memory Tagging Extension is vulnerable to speculative probing. [84] [85]

In July 2024, UC San Diego researchers revealed the Indirector attack against Intel Alder Lake and Raptor Lake CPUs leveraging high-precision Branch Target Injection (BTI). [86] [87] [88] Intel downplayed the severity of the vulnerability and claimed the existing mitigations are enough to tackle the issue. [89] No CVE was assigned.

2025

In January, 2025 Georgia Institute of Technology researchers published two whitepapers on Data Speculation Attacks via Load Address Prediction on Apple Silicon (SLAP) and Breaking the Apple M3 CPU via False Load Output Predictions (FLOP). [90] [91] [92]

Future

Spectre class vulnerabilities will remain unfixed because otherwise CPU designers will have to disable speculative execution which will entail a massive performance loss.[ citation needed ] Despite this, AMD has managed to design Zen 4 such a way its performance is not affected by mitigations. [54] [55]

Vulnerabilities and mitigations summary

Mitigation TypeComprehensivenessEffectivenessPerformance impactDescription
HardwareFullFullNone to smallRequire changes to the CPU design and thus a new iteration of hardware
Microcode Partial to fullPartial to fullNone to largeUpdates the software that the CPU runs on which requires patches to be released for each affected CPU and integrated into every BIOS or operating system
OS/VMMPartialPartial to fullSmall to largeApplied at the operating system or virtual machine level and (depending on workload)
Software recompilationPoorPartial to fullMedium to largeRequires recompiling lots of pieces of software
Vulnerability Name(s)/Subname
Official Name/Subname
CVEAffected CPU architectures and mitigations
Intel [93] AMD [94]
10th gen9th gen8th gen* Zen / Zen+ Zen 2 [95]
Ice Lake [96] Cascade  / Comet  /
Amber Lake
Coffee Lake [97] Whiskey Lake Coffee Lake,
Amber Lake
Spectre v1
Bounds Check Bypass
CVE- 2017-5753 Software recompilation [41]
v2
Branch Target Injection [98]
CVE- 2017-5715 Hardware + OS/VMM /
Software recompilation
Microcode + ...Microcode + OS/VMM /
Software recompilation
Hardware + OS/VMM /
Software recompilation
Hardware + ... [a]
Meltdown / v3
Rogue Data Cache Load
CVE- 2017-5754 HardwareOSNot affected
Spectre-NGv3a
Rogue System Register Read
CVE- 2018-3640 HardwareHardwareMicrocodeMicrocodeMicrocode
Microcode [b] Hardware [a]
v4
Speculative Store Bypass [99]
CVE- 2018-3639 [Hardware + OS / ]
Software recompilation
...[Microcode + OS / ]
Software recompilation
OS/VMMHardware + OS/VMM
... [a]
Lazy FP State Restore CVE- 2018-3665 OS/VMM [100] Not affected
v1.1
Bounds Check Bypass Store
CVE- 2018-3693 Software recompilation [101]
SpectreRSB [102] /ret2spec [103]
Return Mispredict
CVE- 2018-15572 OS [104]
Foreshadow
L1 Terminal Fault (L1TF) [105]
SGX CVE- 2018-3615 Not affectedMicrocodeNot affected
OS/SMM CVE- 2018-3620 Microcode + OS/VMM
VMMCVE- 2018-3646
Microarchitectural Data Sampling (MDS) [106] [107] RIDLZombieLoad
Fill Buffer (MFBDS)
CVE- 2018-12130 Microcode + OS
Load Port (MLPDS)CVE- 2018-12127 HardwareMicrocode + OS/VMM [c]
Hardware [a]
Fallout
Store Buffer (MSBDS)
CVE- 2018-12126 Hardware + Microcode [108] [109] Microcode + OS/VMM [c] Microcode + OS/VMM
Hardware [a]
RIDLUncacheable Memory (MDSUM)CVE- 2019-11091 Same as the buffer having entries
SWAPGS [110] [111] [112] CVE- 2019-1125 OS
RIDL
(Rogue In-Flight Data Load)
ZombieLoad v2 [113] [114]
TSX Asynchronous Abort (TAA) [115] [116]
CVE- 2019-11135 Hardware [d] Microcode + OS/VMMExisting MDS mitigationsExisting MDS mitigations
TSX not supported [b] Microcode + OS/VMM [a]
ZombieLoad/CacheOut
L1D Eviction Sampling (L1DES) [117] [118] [119]
CVE- 2020-0549 Not affectedMicrocodeMicrocode
Not affected [b]
Vector Register Sampling (VRS) [118] [119] CVE- 2020-0548 Microcode
Not affected [b]
Load Value Injection (LVI) [120] [121] [122] [123] CVE- 2020-0551 Software recompilation (mainly for Intel SGX)
CROSSTalk [124]
Special Register Buffer Data Sampling (SRBDS) [125]
CVE- 2020-0543 Microcode [e] Microcode
Not affected
Floating Point Value Injection (FPVI) [126] [127] CVE- 2021-0086
CVE- 2021-26314
Software recompilation
Speculative Code Store Bypass (SCSB) [128] [127] CVE- 2021-0089
CVE- 2021-26313
Branch History Injection (BHI) [129]
and other forms of intra-mode BTI
CVE- 2022-0001
CVE- 2022-0002
Software recompilationNot affectedNot affected
Software recompilation [a]
MMIO Stale Data [130] Shared Buffers Data Read (SBDR)CVE- 2022-21123
Not affected [f]
Microcode + Software recompilation [g]
Microcode + Software recompilationSoftware recompilationNot affected
Shared Buffers Data Sampling (SBDS)CVE- 2022-21125
Device Register Partial Write (DRPW)CVE- 2022-21166 MicrocodeExisting MDS mitigations
Branch Type Confusion (BTC) [131] Phantom [132] BTC-NOBR
BTC-DIR
CVE- 2022-23825 Not affectedOS/VMM
BTC-INDExisting Spectre v2 mitigations
Retbleed [133] [134] [135] [136]
BTC-RET
CVE- 2022-29900
CVE- 2022-29901
Not affectedOS/VMMOS/VMMOS/VMM /
Software recompilation
Not affected [a]
Cross-Thread Return Address Predictions [57] [56] CVE- 2022-27672 Not affectedOS/VMM
Zenbleed [137]
Cross-Process Information Leak [138] [139]
CVE- 2023-20593 Not affectedMicrocode
Inception [132] [61] [140]
Speculative Return Stack Overflow (SRSO)
CVE- 2023-20569 Not affectedOS/VMM
Downfall [64] [65]
Gather Data Sampling (GDS) [63]
CVE- 2022-40982 MicrocodeNot affected

The 8th generation Coffee Lake architecture in this table also applies to a wide range of previously released Intel CPUs, not limited to the architectures based on Intel Core, Pentium 4 and Intel Atom starting with Silvermont. [141] [142] Various CPU microarchitectures not included above are also affected, among them are ARM, IBM Power, MIPS and others. [143] [144] [145] [146]

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Whiskey Lake stepping C [93]
    Coffee Lake stepping D
  2. 1 2 3 4 Comet Lake except U42 (CPUID 806EC) [93]
  3. 1 2 Cascade Lake stepping 5 [106]
  4. Ice Lake Xeon-SP (CPUID 606A*) [93]
  5. Comet Lake U42
    Amber Lake
    (CPUID 806EC) [93]
  6. Cascade Lake [93]
  7. Ice Lake Core family (CPUID 706E5) [93]

Related Research Articles

RDRAND is an instruction for returning random numbers from an Intel on-chip hardware random number generator which has been seeded by an on-chip entropy source. It is also known as Intel Secure Key Technology, codenamed Bull Mountain. Intel introduced the feature around 2012, and AMD added support for the instruction in June 2015.

In computer security, virtual machine (VM) escape is the process of a program breaking out of the virtual machine on which it is running and interacting with the host operating system. In theory, a virtual machine is a "completely isolated guest operating system installation within a normal host operating system", but this isn't always the case in practice.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Intel Management Engine</span> Autonomous computer subsystem

The Intel Management Engine (ME), also known as the Intel Manageability Engine, is an autonomous subsystem that has been incorporated in virtually all of Intel's processor chipsets since 2008. It is located in the Platform Controller Hub of modern Intel motherboards.

Intel Software Guard Extensions (SGX) is a set of instruction codes implementing trusted execution environment that are built into some Intel central processing units (CPUs). They allow user-level and operating system code to define protected private regions of memory, called enclaves. SGX is designed to be useful for implementing secure remote computation, secure web browsing, and digital rights management (DRM). Other applications include concealment of proprietary algorithms and of encryption keys.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zen 2</span> 2019 AMD 7-nanometer processor microarchitecture

Zen 2 is a computer processor microarchitecture by AMD. It is the successor of AMD's Zen and Zen+ microarchitectures, and is fabricated on the 7 nm MOSFET node from TSMC. The microarchitecture powers the third generation of Ryzen processors, known as Ryzen 3000 for the mainstream desktop chips, Ryzen 4000U/H and Ryzen 5000U for mobile applications, as Threadripper 3000 for high-end desktop systems, and as Ryzen 4000G for accelerated processing units (APUs). The Ryzen 3000 series CPUs were released on 7 July 2019, while the Zen 2-based Epyc server CPUs were released on 7 August 2019. An additional chip, the Ryzen 9 3950X, was released in November 2019.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ryzen</span> AMD brand for microprocessors

Ryzen is a brand of multi-core x86-64 microprocessors, designed and marketed by AMD for desktop, mobile, server, and embedded platforms, based on the Zen microarchitecture. It consists of central processing units (CPUs) marketed for mainstream, enthusiast, server, and workstation segments, and accelerated processing units (APUs), marketed for mainstream and entry-level segments, and embedded systems applications.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kernel page-table isolation</span>

Kernel page-table isolation is a Linux kernel feature that mitigates the Meltdown security vulnerability and improves kernel hardening against attempts to bypass kernel address space layout randomization (KASLR). It works by better isolating user space and kernel space memory. KPTI was merged into Linux kernel version 4.15, and backported to Linux kernels 4.14.11, 4.9.75, and 4.4.110. Windows and macOS released similar updates. KPTI does not address the related Spectre vulnerability.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Meltdown (security vulnerability)</span> Microprocessor security vulnerability

Meltdown is one of the two original speculative execution CPU vulnerabilities. Meltdown affects Intel x86 microprocessors, IBM Power microprocessors, and some ARM-based microprocessors. It allows a rogue process to read all memory, even when it is not authorized to do so.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Spectre (security vulnerability)</span> Processor security vulnerability

Spectre is one of the two original speculative execution CPU vulnerabilities, which involve microarchitectural side-channel attacks. These affect modern microprocessors that perform branch prediction and other forms of speculation. On most processors, the speculative execution resulting from a branch misprediction may leave observable side effects that may reveal private data to attackers. For example, if the pattern of memory accesses performed by such speculative execution depends on private data, the resulting state of the data cache constitutes a side channel through which an attacker may be able to extract information about the private data using a timing attack.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">AMD Platform Security Processor</span> Trusted execution environment subsystem that runs on AMD microprocessors

The AMD Platform Security Processor (PSP), officially known as AMD Secure Technology, is a trusted execution environment subsystem incorporated since about 2013 into AMD microprocessors. According to an AMD developer's guide, the subsystem is "responsible for creating, monitoring and maintaining the security environment" and "its functions include managing the boot process, initializing various security related mechanisms, and monitoring the system for any suspicious activity or events and implementing an appropriate response". Critics worry it can be used as a backdoor and is a security concern. AMD has denied requests to open source the code that runs on the PSP.

Speculative Store Bypass (SSB) is the name given to a hardware security vulnerability and its exploitation that takes advantage of speculative execution in a similar way to the Meltdown and Spectre security vulnerabilities. It affects the ARM, AMD and Intel families of processors. It was discovered by researchers at Microsoft Security Response Center and Google Project Zero (GPZ). After being leaked on 3 May 2018 as part of a group of eight additional Spectre-class flaws provisionally named Spectre-NG, it was first disclosed to the public as "Variant 4" on 21 May 2018, alongside a related speculative execution vulnerability designated "Variant 3a".

Lazy FPU state leak, also referred to as Lazy FP State Restore or LazyFP, is a security vulnerability affecting Intel Core CPUs. The vulnerability is caused by a combination of flaws in the speculative execution technology present within the affected CPUs and how certain operating systems handle context switching on the floating point unit (FPU). By exploiting this vulnerability, a local process can leak the content of the FPU registers that belong to another process. This vulnerability is related to the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities that were publicly disclosed in January 2018.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Foreshadow</span> Hardware vulnerability for Intel processors

Foreshadow, known as L1 Terminal Fault (L1TF) by Intel, is a vulnerability that affects modern microprocessors that was first discovered by two independent teams of researchers in January 2018, but was first disclosed to the public on 14 August 2018. The vulnerability is a speculative execution attack on Intel processors that may result in the disclosure of sensitive information stored in personal computers and third-party clouds. There are two versions: the first version (original/Foreshadow) targets data from SGX enclaves; and the second version (next-generation/Foreshadow-NG) targets virtual machines (VMs), hypervisors (VMM), operating systems (OS) kernel memory, and System Management Mode (SMM) memory. A listing of affected Intel hardware has been posted.

In digital computing, hardware security bugs are hardware bugs or flaws that create vulnerabilities affecting computer central processing units (CPUs), or other devices which incorporate programmable processors or logic and have direct memory access, which allow data to be read by a rogue process when such reading is not authorized. Such vulnerabilities are considered "catastrophic" by security analysts.

Spoiler is a security vulnerability on modern computer central processing units that use speculative execution. It exploits side-effects of speculative execution to improve the efficiency of Rowhammer and other related memory and cache attacks. According to reports, all modern Intel Core CPUs are vulnerable to the attack as of 2019. AMD has stated that its processors are not vulnerable.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Microarchitectural Data Sampling</span> CPU vulnerabilities

The Microarchitectural Data Sampling (MDS) vulnerabilities are a set of weaknesses in Intel x86 microprocessors that use hyper-threading, and leak data across protection boundaries that are architecturally supposed to be secure. The attacks exploiting the vulnerabilities have been labeled Fallout, RIDL, ZombieLoad., and ZombieLoad 2.

SWAPGS, also known as Spectre variant 1, is a computer security vulnerability that utilizes the branch prediction used in modern microprocessors. Most processors use a form of speculative execution, this feature allows the processors to make educated guesses about the instructions that will most likely need to be executed in the near future. This speculation can leave traces in the cache, which attackers use to extract data using a timing attack, similar to side-channel exploitation of Spectre.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Load value injection</span> Microprocessor security vulnerability

Load value injection (LVI) is an attack on Intel microprocessors that can be used to attack Intel's Software Guard Extensions (SGX) technology. It is a development of the previously known Meltdown security vulnerability. Unlike Meltdown, which can only read hidden data, LVI can inject data values, and is resistant to the countermeasures so far used to mitigate the Meltdown vulnerability.

Retbleed is a speculative execution attack on x86-64 and ARM processors, including some recent Intel and AMD chips. First made public in 2022, it is a variant of the Spectre vulnerability which exploits retpoline, which was a mitigation for speculative execution attacks.

Downfall, known as Gather Data Sampling (GDS) by Intel, is a computer security vulnerability found in 6th through 11th generations of consumer and 1st through 4th generations of Xeon Intel x86-64 microprocessors. It is a transient execution CPU vulnerability which relies on speculative execution of Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX) instructions to reveal the content of vector registers.

References

  1. Kocher, Paul; Horn, Jann; Fogh, Anders; Genkin, Daniel; Gruss, Daniel. "Spectre Attacks: Exploiting Speculative Execution" (PDF). Retrieved 2020-04-16.
  2. Bogle, Ariel (January 4, 2018). "Processor vulnerabilities could leave most computers open to hackers". ABC News. Archived from the original on January 5, 2018. Retrieved January 4, 2018.
  3. 1 2 Murphy, Margi (January 3, 2018). "Fix for critical Intel chip flaw will slow down millions of computers" . The Telegraph . Telegraph Media Group. Archived from the original on January 10, 2022. Retrieved January 3, 2017.
  4. Coldewey, Devin (January 4, 2018). "Kernel panic! What are Meltdown and Spectre, the bugs affecting nearly every computer and device?". Archived from the original on January 4, 2018. Retrieved January 4, 2018.
  5. Greenberg, Andy. "A Critical Intel Flaw Breaks Basic Security for Most Computers". Wired . Archived from the original on January 3, 2018. Retrieved January 4, 2018.
  6. Metz, Cade; Chen, Brian X. (January 4, 2018). "What You Need to Do Because of Flaws in Computer Chips" . The New York Times . Archived from the original on January 3, 2022. Retrieved January 5, 2018.
  7. Pressman, Aaron (January 5, 2018). "Why Your Web Browser May Be Most Vulnerable to Spectre and What to Do About It". Fortune . Archived from the original on January 10, 2018. Retrieved January 5, 2018.
  8. Chacos, Brad (January 4, 2018). "How to protect your PC from the major Meltdown and Spectre CPU flaws". PC World . Archived from the original on January 4, 2018. Retrieved January 4, 2018.
  9. Elliot, Matt (January 4, 2018). "Security – How to protect your PC against the Intel chip flaw – Here are the steps to take to keep your Windows laptop or PC safe from Meltdown and Spectre". CNET . Archived from the original on January 4, 2018. Retrieved January 4, 2018.
  10. Hachman, Mark (January 9, 2018). "Microsoft tests show Spectre patches drag down performance on older PCs". PC World . Archived from the original on February 9, 2018. Retrieved January 9, 2018.
  11. Metz, Cade; Perlroth, Nicole (January 3, 2018). "Researchers Discover Two Major Flaws in the World's Computers". The New York Times . ISSN   0362-4331. Archived from the original on January 3, 2018. Retrieved January 3, 2018.
  12. "Computer chip scare: What you need to know". BBC News . January 4, 2018. Archived from the original on October 11, 2020. Retrieved January 4, 2018.
  13. "Intel says processor bug isn't unique to its chips and performance issues are 'workload-dependent'". The Verge. Archived from the original on January 3, 2018. Retrieved January 4, 2018.
  14. "Meltdown and Spectre". meltdownattack.com. Archived from the original on January 3, 2018. Retrieved January 4, 2018.
  15. Tung, Liam. "Are 8 new 'Spectre-class' flaws about to be exposed? Intel confirms it's readying fixes". ZDNet. Archived from the original on May 22, 2018. Retrieved May 4, 2018.
  16. 1 2 Cimpanu, Catalin (March 5, 2020). "Intel CSME bug is worse than previously thought – Researchers say a full patch requires replacing hardware. Only the latest Intel 10th generation CPUs are not affected". ZDNet . Archived from the original on March 5, 2020. Retrieved March 8, 2020.
  17. 1 2 Goodin, Dan (March 5, 2020). "5 years of Intel CPUs and chipsets have a concerning flaw that's unfixable – Converged Security and Management Engine flaw may jeopardize Intel's root of trust". Ars Technica . Archived from the original on March 6, 2020. Retrieved March 6, 2020.
  18. 1 2 Dent, Steve (March 6, 2020). "Researchers discover that Intel chips have an unfixable security flaw – The chips are vulnerable during boot-up, so they can't be patched with a firmware update". Engadget . Archived from the original on March 6, 2020. Retrieved March 6, 2020.
  19. 1 2 Staff (February 11, 2020). "Intel Converged Security and Management Engine, Intel Server Platform Services, Intel Trusted Execution Engine, and Intel Active Management Technology Advisory (Intel-SA-00213)". Intel. Archived from the original on March 5, 2020. Retrieved March 6, 2020.
  20. Gibbs, Samuel (January 3, 2018). "Major security flaw found in Intel processors". Theguardian.com. Archived from the original on January 4, 2018. Retrieved January 5, 2018 via www.TheGuardian.com.
  21. "How to protect your PC against the major 'Meltdown' CPU security flaw". TheVerge.com. January 4, 2018. Archived from the original on January 5, 2018. Retrieved January 5, 2018.
  22. Warren, Tom (March 15, 2018). "Intel processors are being redesigned to protect against Spectre – New hardware coming later this year". The Verge . Archived from the original on March 15, 2018. Retrieved March 15, 2018.
  23. Shankland, Stephen (March 15, 2018). "Intel will block Spectre attacks with new chips this year – Cascade Lake processors for servers, coming this year, will fight back against a new class of vulnerabilities, says CEO Brian Krzanich". CNET . Archived from the original on March 15, 2018. Retrieved March 15, 2018.
  24. Tung, Liam. "Are 8 new 'Spectre-class' flaws about to be exposed? Intel confirms it's readying fixes". ZDNet. Archived from the original on May 22, 2018. Retrieved May 4, 2018.
  25. "Intel discloses three more chip flaws". Reuters. Archived from the original on August 16, 2018. Retrieved August 16, 2018.
  26. Culbertson, Leslie. "Protecting Our Customers through the Lifecycle of Security Threats". Intel Newsroom. Archived from the original on August 14, 2018. Retrieved August 16, 2018.
  27. "Fallout: Reading Kernel Writes From User Space" (PDF). RIDL and Fallout: MDS Attacks. Archived from the original (PDF) on May 16, 2019. Retrieved May 18, 2019.
  28. "RIDL: Rogue In-Flight Data Load" (PDF). RIDL and Fallout: MDS attacks. Archived from the original (PDF) on May 17, 2019.
  29. "ZombieLoad Attack". zombieloadattack.com. Archived from the original on May 14, 2019. Retrieved May 18, 2019.
  30. "Intel Released "Coffee Lake" Knowing it Was Vulnerable to Spectre and Meltdown". TECHPOWERUP. 5 January 2018.
  31. Cutress, Ian. "AMD Issues Updated Speculative Spectre Security Status: Predictive Store Forwarding". www.anandtech.com. Retrieved 2021-04-08.
  32. "Benchmarking AMD Zen 3 With Predictive Store Forwarding Disabled - Phoronix". www.phoronix.com. Retrieved 2021-04-08.
  33. "Rage Against the Machine Clear". VUSec. 8 June 2021. Retrieved 2021-06-29.
  34. "Speculative Processor Vulnerability | Frequently asked questions". Arm Developer. Retrieved 2021-06-29.
  35. Yan, Joseph Ravichandran, Weon Taek Na, Jay Lang, Mengjia (2022-06-09). "The PACMAN Attack". PACMAN. Retrieved 2024-11-16.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  36. "Documentation – Arm Developer". developer.arm.com. Retrieved 2024-11-16.
  37. Page, Carly (2022-06-10). "MIT researchers uncover 'unpatchable' flaw in Apple M1 chips". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2024-11-16.
  38. "Transient Execution of Non-canonical Accesses".
  39. Musaev, Saidgani; Fetzer, Christof (2021). "Transient Execution of Non-Canonical Accesses". arXiv: 2108.10771 [cs.CR].
  40. Francisco, Thomas Claburn in San. "Boffins find if you torture AMD Zen+, Zen 2 CPUs enough, they are vulnerable to Meltdown-like attack". www.theregister.com. Retrieved 2021-09-05.
  41. 1 2 "White Paper | Software techniques for managing speculation on AMD processors" (PDF). www.amd.com. Retrieved 2024-07-28.
  42. Lipp, Moritz; Gruss, Daniel; Schwarz, Michael (2021-10-19). "AMD Prefetch Attacks through Power and Time". USENIX Security Symposium.
  43. "AMD Prefetch Attacks through Power and Time" (PDF).
  44. "Side-channels Related to the x86 PREFETCH Instruction".
  45. "Branch History Injection". VUSec. Retrieved 2022-03-08.
  46. "BHI: The Newest Spectre Vulnerability Affecting Intel & Arm CPUs". www.phoronix.com. Retrieved 2022-03-08.
  47. Ltd, Arm. "Speculative Processor Vulnerability | Spectre-BHB". Arm Developer. Retrieved 2022-03-11.
  48. "Linux Lands Mitigations For Spectre-BHB / BHI On Intel & Arm, Plus An AMD Change Too". www.phoronix.com. Retrieved 2022-03-08.
  49. "grsecurity - The AMD Branch (Mis)predictor Part 2: Where No CPU has Gone Before (CVE-2021-26341)". grsecurity.net. Retrieved 2022-03-11.
  50. "AMD CPUs May Transiently Execute Beyond Unconditional Direct Branch".
  51. "oss-security - Xen Security Advisory 404 v2 (CVE-2022-21123,CVE-2022-21125,CVE-2022-21166) - x86: MMIO Stale Data vulnerabilities". www.openwall.com. Retrieved 2022-06-19.
  52. "AMD Details "SQUIP" Side Channel Vulnerability For Zen's Execution Unit Scheduler". www.phoronix.com. Retrieved 2022-08-10.
  53. "Execution Unit Scheduler Contention Side-Channel Vulnerability on AMD Processors".
  54. 1 2 "With AMD Zen 4, It's Surprisingly Not Worthwhile Disabling CPU Security Mitigations". www.phoronix.com. Retrieved 2022-10-07.
  55. 1 2 "Disabling Spectre V2 Mitigations Is What Can Impair AMD Ryzen 7000 Series Performance". www.phoronix.com. Retrieved 2022-10-07.
  56. 1 2 "[FYI PATCH 0/3] Cross-Thread Return Address Predictions vulnerability [LWN.net]". lwn.net. Retrieved 2023-02-14.
  57. 1 2 "Cross-Thread Return Address Predictions | AMD". February 14, 2022. Retrieved 2023-08-11.
  58. "oss-sec: Xen Security Advisory 426 v1 (CVE-2022-27672) - x86: Cross-Thread Return Address Predictions". seclists.org. Retrieved 2023-02-15.
  59. Paul Alcorn (2023-07-24). "AMD 'Zenbleed' Bug Allows Data Theft From Zen 2 Processors, Patches Coming". Tom's Hardware. Retrieved 2023-07-24.
  60. "Cross-Process Information Leak". amd.com. 2023-07-24. Retrieved 2023-07-27.
  61. 1 2 "Return Address Security Bulletin". amd.com. 2023-08-08. Retrieved 2023-08-08.
  62. "New Inception attack leaks sensitive data from all AMD Zen CPUs". BleepingComputer. Retrieved 2023-08-09.
  63. 1 2 "Gather Data Sampling". Intel. Retrieved 2023-08-09.
  64. 1 2 "Downfall". Downfall Attacks. Retrieved 2023-08-09.
  65. 1 2 "Downfall and Zenbleed: Googlers helping secure the ecosystem". Google Online Security Blog. Retrieved 2023-08-09.
  66. "SLAM: Spectre based on Linear Address Masking". vusec. Retrieved 2023-12-07.
  67. "TLB-Based Side Channel Attack: Security Update". developer.arm.com. Retrieved 2023-12-07.
  68. "oss-sec: SLAM: Spectre based on Linear Address Masking". seclists.org. Retrieved 2023-12-07.
  69. "New SLAM attack steals sensitive data from AMD, future Intel CPUs". BleepingComputer. Retrieved 2023-12-07.
  70. "GhostRace". vusec. Retrieved 2024-03-12.
  71. "Speculative Race Conditions (SRCs)". amd.com. 2024-03-12.
  72. "GhostRace Detailed - Speculative Race Conditions Affecting All Major CPUs / ISAs". www.phoronix.com. Retrieved 2024-03-12.
  73. "oss-sec: Xen Security Advisory 453 v1 (CVE-2024-2193) - GhostRace: Speculative Race Conditions". seclists.org. Retrieved 2024-03-14.
  74. "Register File Data Sampling". Intel. Retrieved 2024-03-15.
  75. "The Performance Impact Of Intel's Register File Data Sampling". www.phoronix.com. Retrieved 2024-03-15.
  76. "InSpectre Gadget". vusec. Retrieved 2024-04-14.
  77. "oss-security - Xen Security Advisory 456 v2 (CVE-2024-2201) - x86: Native Branch History Injection". www.openwall.com. Retrieved 2024-04-14.
  78. "2268118 – (CVE-2024-2201) CVE-2024-2201 hw: cpu: intel:InSpectre Gadget a residual Attack Surface of Cross-privilege Spectre v2". bugzilla.redhat.com. Retrieved 2024-04-14.
  79. "Branch History Injection and Intra-mode Branch Target Injection". Intel. Retrieved 2024-04-14.
  80. Kim, Juhee; Park, Jinbum; Roh, Sihyeon; Chung, Jaeyoung; Lee, Youngjoo; Kim, Taesoo; Lee, Byoungyoung (2024-06-12). "TikTag: Breaking ARM's Memory Tagging Extension with Speculative Execution". arXiv: 2406.08719 [cs.CR].
  81. "'TIKTAG' : The New ARM Attack - SECNORA". secnora.com. Retrieved 2024-11-16.
  82. "New ARM 'TIKTAG' attack impacts Google Chrome, Linux systems". BleepingComputer. Retrieved 2024-11-16.
  83. compsec-snu/tiktag, Security Research Lab at Seoul National University (SNU), 2024-11-09, retrieved 2024-11-16
  84. "Sticky Tags: Efficient and Deterministic Spatial Memory Error Mitigation using Persistent Memory Tags". VUSec. Retrieved 2025-01-14.
  85. "Arm Memory Tagging Extension: Security Update". Arm Developer. Retrieved 2025-01-14.
  86. "Indirector". indirector.cpusec.org. Retrieved 2024-07-03.
  87. "Latest Intel CPUs impacted by new Indirector side-channel attack". BleepingComputer. Retrieved 2024-07-03.
  88. Dallin Grimm (2024-07-03). "Newer Intel CPUs vulnerable to new "Indirector" attack — Spectre-style attacks risk stealing sensitive data; Intel says no new mitigations required". Tom's Hardware. Retrieved 2024-07-03.
  89. "INTEL-2024-07-02-001- Indirector". Intel. Retrieved 2024-07-03.
  90. "SLAP and FLOP". predictors.fail. Retrieved 2025-01-29.
  91. "New Apple CPU side-channel attacks steal data from browsers". BleepingComputer. Retrieved 2025-01-29.
  92. Claburn, Thomas (2025-01-29). "SLAP, Apple, and FLOP: Safari, Chrome at risk of data theft on iPhone, Mac, iPad Silicon". The Register. Retrieved 2025-01-29.
  93. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 "Affected Processors: Transient Execution Attacks & Related Security Issues by CPU". Intel. November 3, 2023. Archived from the original on 2021-05-09. Retrieved 2024-03-12.
  94. "AMD Product Security | AMD". August 10, 2019. Retrieved 2019-08-10.
  95. Cutress, Ian. "AMD Zen 2 Microarchitecture Analysis: Ryzen 3000 and EPYC Rome". www.anandtech.com. Retrieved 2019-06-11.
  96. Cutress, Dr Ian. "The Ice Lake Benchmark Preview: Inside Intel's 10nm". www.anandtech.com. Retrieved 2019-08-01.
  97. "Intel Core i9-9900K mit 8 Kernen und 5 GHz für Gamer". heise online (in German). October 8, 2018. Retrieved 2018-10-09.
  98. Intel (January 3, 2018). Branch Target Injection (Technical report). Retrieved 2024-03-06. Two mitigation techniques have been developed ...: indirect branch control mechanisms and a software approach called ... retpoline
  99. Intel (May 21, 2018). Speculative Store Bypass (Technical report). Retrieved 2024-03-06. To minimize performance impact, we do not currently recommend setting SSBD for OSes, VMMs ...
  100. "INTEL-SA-00145". Intel.
  101. "Bounds Check Bypass Store (BCBS) Vulnerability (INTEL-OSS-10002)". Intel.
  102. "Spectre Returns! Speculation Attacks using the Return Stack Buffer" (PDF). www.usenix.org. Retrieved 2019-08-17.
  103. Maisuradze, Giorgi; Rossow, Christian (2018). "ret2spec: Speculative Execution Using Return Stack Buffers". Proceedings of the 2018 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security. pp. 2109–2122. arXiv: 1807.10364 . Bibcode:2018arXiv180710364M. doi:10.1145/3243734.3243761. ISBN   9781450356930. S2CID   51804116.
  104. "Kernel/Git/Torvalds/Linux.git - Linux kernel source tree".
  105. "Processors Affected: L1 Terminal Fault". Intel. August 14, 2018. Retrieved 2024-03-06. ... processors that have the RDCL_NO bit set to one (1) ... are not susceptible to the L1TF ...
  106. 1 2 "Processors Affected: Microarchitectural Data Sampling". Intel. May 14, 2019. Retrieved 2024-03-07. ... MFBDS is mitigated if either the RDCL_NO or MDS_NO bit ... are set. ... All processors affected by MSBDS, MFBDS, or MLPDS are also affected by MDSUM for the relevant buffers.
  107. Intel (March 11, 2021) [Disclosed May 14, 2019]. Microarchitectural Data Sampling (Technical report). Retrieved 2024-03-07. VMMs that already ... mitigate L1TF may not need further changes ... a VERW may be needed to overwrite the store buffers ...
  108. Moghimi, Daniel (July 14, 2020). Data Sampling on MDS-resistant 10th Generation Intel Core (Ice Lake). GitHub (Technical report). Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Retrieved 2020-07-15.
  109. Intel (July 14, 2020). "Microarchitectural Data Sampling Advisory" (Press release). Retrieved 2020-07-15. Intel Core Processor Family (Ice Lake)
  110. "Bitdefender SWAPGS Attack Mitigation Solutions". www.bitdefender.com. Retrieved 2019-08-07.
  111. "Documentation/admin-guide/hw-vuln/spectre.rst - chromiumos/third_party/kernel - Git at Google". chromium.googlesource.com. Archived from the original on 2019-08-07. Retrieved 2019-08-07.
  112. Winder, Davey (August 6, 2019). "Microsoft Confirms New Windows CPU Attack Vulnerability, Advises All Users To Update Now". Forbes . Retrieved 2019-08-07.
  113. Nichols, Shaun. "True to its name, Intel CPU flaw ZombieLoad comes shuffling back with new variant". www.theregister.co.uk. Retrieved 2019-11-12.
  114. Cimpanu, Catalin. "Intel's Cascade Lake CPUs impacted by new Zombieload v2 attack". ZDNet. Retrieved 2019-11-12.
  115. "Cyberus Technology: TSX Asynchronous Abort". www.cyberus-technology.de. Retrieved 2019-11-12.
  116. Intel (November 12, 2019). Intel TSX Asynchronous Abort (Technical report). Retrieved 2024-03-12. ... TAA can be mitigated by either applying the MDS software mitigations or by selectively disabling Intel TSX ...
  117. "CacheOut". cacheoutattack.com. Retrieved 2020-01-29.
  118. 1 2 "MDS Attacks: Microarchitectural Data Sampling". mdsattacks.com. Retrieved 2020-01-27.
  119. 1 2 "IPAS: INTEL-SA-00329". Technology@Intel. January 27, 2020. Retrieved 2020-01-28.
  120. "LVI: Hijacking Transient Execution with Load Value Injection". lviattack.eu. Retrieved 2020-03-10.
  121. "INTEL-SA-00334". Intel. Retrieved 2020-03-10.
  122. "Deep Dive: Load Value Injection". software.intel.com. Retrieved 2020-03-10.
  123. Claburn, Thomas. "You only LVI twice: Meltdown The Sequel strikes Intel chips – and full mitigation against data-meddling flaw will cost you 50%+ of performance". www.theregister.co.uk. Retrieved 2020-03-10.
  124. "CROSSTalk". VUSec. Retrieved 2020-06-09.
  125. Intel (June 14, 2022) [Disclosed June 9, 2020]. Special Register Buffer Data Sampling (Technical report). Retrieved 2024-03-21. ... systems that have loaded the microcode ... are fully mitigated by default
  126. Intel (June 8, 2021). Floating Point Value Injection (Technical report). Retrieved 2024-05-03. Managed runtimes impacted by FPVI ...
  127. 1 2 AMD (June 8, 2021). "Speculative Code Store Bypass and Floating-Point Value Injection" (Press release). Retrieved 2024-05-03.
  128. Intel (June 8, 2021). Speculative Code Store Bypass (Technical report). Retrieved 2024-05-03. For example, some JIT compilers inside web browsers ... may be impacted by SCSB
  129. Intel (March 11, 2022) [Disclosed March 8, 2022]. Branch History Injection and Intra-mode Branch Target Injection (Technical report). Retrieved 2024-03-22. ... potential BHI attacks can be mitigated by adding LFENCE to specific identified gadgets ...
  130. Intel (June 14, 2022). Processor MMIO Stale Data Vulnerabilities (Technical report). Retrieved 2024-04-17. For processors ... where MD_CLEAR may not overwrite fill buffer values, Intel has released microcode updates ... so that VERW does overwrite fill buffer values. ...To mitigate this, the OS, VMM, or driver that reads the secret data can reduce the window in which that data remains vulnerable ... by performing an additional read of some non-secret data
  131. AMD (July 12, 2022). "AMD CPU Branch Type Confusion" (Press release). Retrieved 2024-03-25.
  132. 1 2 "Inception: how a simple XOR can cause a Microarchitectural Stack Overflow". Computer Security Group. Retrieved 2023-09-15.
  133. "Retbleed: Arbitrary Speculative Code Execution with Return Instructions – Computer Security Group" . Retrieved 2022-07-12.
  134. "INTEL-SA-00702". Intel. Retrieved 2022-07-13.
  135. "AMD, Intel chips vulnerable to 'Retbleed' Spectre variant". www.theregister.com. Retrieved 2022-07-12.
  136. Goodin, Dan (July 12, 2022). "New working speculative execution attack sends Intel and AMD scrambling". Ars Technica. Retrieved 2022-07-12.
  137. "security-research/pocs/cpus/zenbleed at master · google/security-research". GitHub. Retrieved 2023-07-27.
  138. "AMD: Information Leak in Zen 2". GitHub. Retrieved 2023-07-27.
  139. "Cross-Process Information Leak". AMD. Retrieved 2023-07-27.
  140. "oss-security - Xen Security Advisory 434 v1 (CVE-2023-20569) - x86/AMD: Speculative Return Stack Overflow". www.openwall.com. Retrieved 2023-09-15.
  141. "INTEL-SA-00088". Intel. Retrieved 2018-09-01.
  142. "INTEL-SA-00115". Intel. Retrieved 2018-09-01.
  143. "Meltdown and Spectre Status Page". wiki.netbsd.org. Retrieved 2019-09-29.
  144. Ltd, Arm. "Speculative Processor Vulnerability | Cache Speculation Issues Update". ARM Developer. Retrieved 2019-09-29.
  145. "About speculative execution vulnerabilities in ARM-based and Intel CPUs". Apple Support. May 31, 2018. Retrieved 2019-09-29.
  146. "Potential Impact on Processors in the POWER Family". IBM PSIRT Blog. May 14, 2019. Retrieved 2019-09-29.