Hyperthreading Considered Harmful

Posted by CowboyNeal on Friday May 13, 2005 @12:07AM from the not-just-for-performance dept.

cperciva writes "Hyper-Threading, as currently implemented on Intel Pentium Extreme Edition, Pentium 4, Mobile Pentium 4, and Xeon processors, suffers from a serious security flaw. This flaw permits local information disclosure, including allowing an unprivileged user to steal an RSA private key being used on the same machine. Administrators of multi-user systems are strongly advised to take action to disable Hyper-Threading immediately. I will be presenting this attack at BSDCan 2005 at 10:00 AM EDT on May 13th, and at the conclusion of my talk I will also releasing a paper describing the attack and possible mitigation strategies."

1 of 392 comments (clear)

Re:Nah...look for him in a van by the river... by xxxJonBoyxxx · 2005-05-13 03:03 · Score: 0, Troll

This fellow is Intel's bitch: he wastes three months of his life to fix a major corporation's problems and he will get no compensation for his efforts. Maybe he hopes Intel will give the good dog a milkbone, but any human being with sense of self-worth would probably do something less demeaning. Nevermind about the van - given his lack of ambition it's probably going to be a laptop and a blanket under an LA freeway bridge.