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Hyperthreading Considered Harmful

Posted by CowboyNeal on 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."

2 of 392 comments (clear)

  1. Nah...look for him in a van by the river... by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: -1, Troll
    "# Where do you work?

    I'm unemployed. For the past three months, I've spent almost all of my time working on this security flaw -- investigating how serious it was, contacting all of the affected vendors, explaining how this should be fixed, et cetera. I simply haven't had time to go out and get a job -- and I decided that making sure that this issue was properly reported and fixed was far more important than earning some money. "

    Lo-ser. This guy needs to get a job and move out of mom's basement. I know I wouldn't hire him - he'd likely spend all day dinking around with something completely non-work-related.

    Security guru? Maybe...if you trust a guy who lives in a van down by the river.

    1. Re:Nah...look for him in a van by the river... by xxxJonBoyxxx · · 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.