Pentium Computers Vulnerable to Attack?

An anonymous reader writes "One of the latest security scares is coming from security experts at CanSecWest/core '06 in the form of a possible hardware-specific attack. The attack is based on the built-in procedure that Pentium based chips use when they overheat. From the article: 'When the processor begins to overheat or encounters other conditions that could threaten the motherboard, the computer interrupts its normal operation, momentarily freezes and stores its activity, said Loïc Duflot, a computer security specialist for the French government's Secretary General for National Defense information technology laboratory. Cyberattackers can take over a computer by appropriating that safeguard to make the machine interrupt operations and enter System Management Mode, Duflot said. Attackers then enter the System Management RAM and replace the default emergency-response software with custom software that, when run, will give them full administrative privileges.'"

Comments

Custpetition

[Doc Ruby]

I'm interested in how a foreign company is in effect competing with Intel not by being a better vendor to Intel's customers, but by being a more demanding customer than Intel's other customers. They're really only half competing, by threatening the value of Intel's products perceived by the market, the same way a competing vendor would, though they're not doing the other half: offering a competing product that offers better perceived value to the market. Another vendor could do so, finding half their competition process already done for them,

Technology industries used to be nearly entirely "supply-side": driven by suppliers. Unpredictable innovation requiring risky investment, costs of production scaling and distribution, securing free-flowing intellectual property all defined a market always hungry for something newer, faster, smaller, safer. The market itself helped control the industry mainly to the extent that suppliers could guess what the market wanted. We're seeing the market gain power over the industry in many ways. Now we're seeing consumer processes actually resemble competition previously only performed by other producers.

Pentium Computers Vulnerable??

[digitaldc]

Pentium Computers Vulnerable to Attack?

YES! Nothing to see here, please move along.