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New Spectre 1.1 and Spectre 1.2 CPU Flaws Disclosed (bleepingcomputer.com)
Two security researchers have revealed details about two new Spectre-class vulnerabilities, which they've named Spectre 1.1 and Spectre 1.2. From a report: Just like all the previous Meltdown and Spectre CPU bugs variations, these two take advantage of the process of speculative execution -- a feature found in all modern CPUs that has the role of improving performance by computing operations in advance and later discarding unneeded data. According to researchers, a Spectre 1.1 attack uses speculative execution to deliver code that overflows CPU store cache buffers in order to write and run malicious code that retrieves data from previously-secured CPU memory sections. Spectre 1.1 is very similar to the Spectre variant 1 and 4, but the two researchers who discovered the bug say that "currently, no effective static analysis or compiler instrumentation is available to generically detect or mitigate Spectre 1.1." As for Spectre 1.2, researchers say this bug can be exploited to write to CPU memory sectors that are normally protected by read-only flags.
as safe as expected anymore. So many thought some designs would be. That their fav brand would be ok.
Lets create a software layer over the CPU to make it all safe. Get that fast speed way down.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
The variants AMD are affected by are the low risk hard to exploit ones that are a long shot. The intel only one is more trivial to exploit.
Do you work for Intel? AMD is not vulnerable to the newly announced exploits. Also the ones AMD is vulnerable too are low risk and hard to exploit, far lower risk than Intel only ones, which are trivial to exploit. Bottom line: AMD is VASTLY safer.
Can we be real for one moment, please? /rant
In the realm of software vulnerabilities, these are:
1) Ridiculously difficult to implement. At the end of the day, you are fundamentally tickling the cache and timing the resultant reads to try to determine the content of that cache. Is there ANY reasonable way to "read" the contents of said cache and determine what context a blob of data means?!?
2)Beyond trial code that is ALL based on the original POC distributed by virus vendors, etc. there is NO known implementation in the wild.
3) This requires the virus to be running ON your fucking computer!! If you are running ANY virus on your computer, you're hosed.
4) Derived from 3), for the forseeable future ANY virus on your system is about 28Giga-times more likely to be a standard, run-of-the-mill virus. Meantime, everyone is running around wanting to burn their CPUs because they are "vulnerable".
FFS!! Does NO ONE have ANY perspective left anymore?!?
These flaws are confined to test cases and proofs of concept. I'm going to wait for Spectre 2.0 (or 2.1, for the bugfixes)
tone
We will see whether this holds up, but at the moment Intel is the one that played it fast and loose in order to have a few percent more performance, while AMD was far more careful and conservative and is now far less at risk and maybe not at all due to massively higher effort to exploit the subset of these vulnerabilities where they are affected. It is still possible that an easy to exploit variant will eventually be found for AMD too, but at the moment there is none.
Given that AMD has already done some additional things against this class of exploits in Zen 2, it may be that Intel CPUs will be a continued problem for the next years, while the same things may be more of an annoyance on AMD or not even present. Well, market dominance is never a good thing. Quality almost always suffers and prices get inflated. It would be a good thing if Intel got cut down quite a bit in size.
Of course, many people now have do defend their bad decision to not even have looked at AMD and they are intent to muddy the waters.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Do you work for Intel? AMD is not vulnerable to the newly announced exploits. Also the ones AMD is vulnerable too are low risk and hard to exploit, far lower risk than Intel only ones, which are trivial to exploit. Bottom line: AMD is VASTLY safer.
AMD has already admitted to being vulnerable to certain variants. Intel has mitigations for the most serious variants in place. The latest round of vulnerabilities have been mitigated through OS fixes. As long as you've been consuming these updates, there is no reason to think that Intel or AMD are in any different position at this point. AMD's pipeline definitely prevented meltdown from affecting them, and most likely makes it easier for them to provide future resiliency through silicon, but I don't see a huge difference between either one as far as the silicon that has already been shipped.
Hardware is getting quite cheap. How about running sensitive code and untrusted code on separate pieces of silicon? (memory and processor at least) -- Let the untrusted code run fast and efficient on one component (depending on the setup, it could even reasonably be native code), and the secure or sensitive code run on a separate component which is secured against as many side-channel attacks as is practical.
Don't see Ultrasparc on list of vulnerable CPU. Of course, I don't see it in any of the three locations of systems I admin either though 8D
Mitigation of prior SPECTRE attacks is cheaper on AMD than on intel. I would be surprised to learn that was not the case again. In addition, it's more difficult to exploit on AMD, and further, AMD was NOT vulnerable to all the classes of SPECTRE attack which affected intel processors. So while you're technically correct, there are also caveats.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You have been doing things wrong, then. I have been using AMD processors literally since the K6, and that was literally the last processor to give me any kind of trouble. And the last K6 I owned was in a laptop and gave me literally zero trouble (although the garbage ATI rage pro lt sure did.) My current PC has an FX-8350 and a pair of Zotac GTX 950 AMP! cards in, and has literally been my most trouble-free hardware ever - and I've owned SGI, DEC, Sun, IBM, Apollo, Amiga, Macs... You name it.
The K6 that caused me problems had a VIA chipset. Yep, there's the problem, it says VIA on it.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Thats why its 1.1 and 1.2 with a new list of brands and their CPU's.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Can we please call these something other than Spectre and Meltdown? We're well on our way to Baskin Robin's 31 flavors of S&M.
Just before this shotstorm started, i build a new PC an thought: after all these years of AMD, let us go for Intel once. What could go wrong. With my luck, the wholeworld is fucked. Sorry.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
watch it on terrarium tv terrarium tv
This hits SPECIFICALLY INTEL CPUs yet is presented as "AMD too".
Mitigation of prior SPECTRE attacks is cheaper on AMD than on intel. I would be surprised to learn that was not the case again. In addition, it's more difficult to exploit on AMD, and further, AMD was NOT vulnerable to all the classes of SPECTRE attack which affected intel processors. So while you're technically correct, there are also caveats.
Based on metrics I’ve seen from Intel, as well as tests performed by my own company, I do not believe that Intel is running any slower than AMD with these mitigations in place. And Intel has given us microcode updates for these fixes long before AMD provided any microcode fixes for their platforms. AMD and Intel have been notified of these issues at the same time. Intel has consistently provided us with fixes prior to the publication of these vulnerabilities and AMD has averaged a 2-3 month delay after notification. AMD is definitely better protected against this type of attack but Intel has been far more responsive to all hardware or firmware vulnerabilities that I’ve seen that affect both platforms.
The caveat to those updates from Intel before the publication is that they have always been beta fixes, though at least 50% of the betas they’ve given us ended up going to production unmodified.
I too had stability issues with the K6... It turned out it was related to the VIA chipset, and more specifically the drivers.. Not that they were buggy, no no, they failed to handle buggy 3Dfx, buggy NVidia and buggy Soundblaster hardware that were all violating the PCI standard, and when you had two of them (which most gamers had), there were small but non-zero chance they would step on eachothers toes due to their abuse of the PCI standard and fuck the system state up.
The non-VIA drivers and Intel BIOS all had work-arounds to keep those buggy hardware in check. After the issue was fixed in a VIA-driver update, there were no more crashes.
But as often is the case. The blame lied nowhere close to whom most people blamed.
And Intel has given us microcode updates for these fixes long before AMD provided any microcode fixes for their platforms.
Many of those microcode fixes were garbage, leading to boot loops, boot hang... Intel does not deserve a reward for pushing out garbage to customers.
AMD and Intel have been notified of these issues at the same time. Intel has consistently provided us with fixes prior to the publication of these vulnerabilities
That is completely false. Intel lagged behind the initial announcement, then started pushing out buggy fixes.
AMD is definitely better protected against this type of attack but Intel has been far more responsive to all hardware or firmware vulnerabilities that Iâ(TM)ve seen that affect both platforms.
AMD did the right thing in the first place, so they are less affected by AFAICT all variants. They can afford to take a couple more days to get it right. They can't afford to push out buggy firmware fixes like Intel can, since they don't have the massive market inertia that Intel does. Thus, they don't have the benefit of as many customers with cognitive dissonance who will justify their purchasing decisions by being Intel's parrot.
The caveat to those updates from Intel before the publication is that they have always been beta fixes, though at least 50% of the betas theyâ(TM)ve given us ended up going to production unmodified.
It's nice you mention that, but it belongs at the top of your comment, not the bottom.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
And Intel has given us microcode updates for these fixes long before AMD provided any microcode fixes for their platforms.
Many of those microcode fixes were garbage, leading to boot loops, boot hang... Intel does not deserve a reward for pushing out garbage to customers.
They did rollback their Spectre V2 mitigation because it caused problems for some users and an OS mitigation was sufficient.
AMD and Intel have been notified of these issues at the same time. Intel has consistently provided us with fixes prior to the publication of these vulnerabilities
That is completely false. Intel lagged behind the initial announcement, then started pushing out buggy fixes.
I know for a fact that is not true because I receive access to both NDA advisories and NDA microcode updates. Intel did not release a production version of certain server platforms at the time of release because they do several months of testing server microcode before calling it production but the client microcode updates were all tested for at least a month and were made available to OEMs withing a week of the date of publication for the newest variants and prior to publication for the original meltdown mitigation.
AMD is definitely better protected against this type of attack but Intel has been far more responsive to all hardware or firmware vulnerabilities that Iâ(TM)ve seen that affect both platforms.
AMD did the right thing in the first place, so they are less affected by AFAICT all variants. They can afford to take a couple more days to get it right. They can't afford to push out buggy firmware fixes like Intel can, since they don't have the massive market inertia that Intel does. Thus, they don't have the benefit of as many customers with cognitive dissonance who will justify their purchasing decisions by being Intel's parrot.
I have acknowledged that AMD did a better job to prevent this specific type of attack. The only practical attack has been a problem strictly for Intel. But they have been just as slow to push fixes for Ryzenfall, etc as they have been for Spectre. And it’s not just a matter of development. It’s a complete lack of communication. It takes me months to get information out of AMD and Intel proactively meets with me almost monthly. I know that they were not given a fair shake with the disclosure of Ryzenfall and I don’t really have a preference for Intel or AMD in my personal life. But I can tell you which company is a lot easier to deal with in my professional life and it’s not AMD.
The caveat to those updates from Intel before the publication is that they have always been beta fixes, though at least 50% of the betas theyâ(TM)ve given us ended up going to production unmodified.
It's nice you mention that, but it belongs at the top of your comment, not the bottom.
Why does that really matter? Did I say that the publication date fixes were beta? No. I said that the pre-publication fixes that Intel provides me for validation have been betas. That’s normal. But over half of those beta fixes also end up being the production fix. I can do a binary comparison between them and see they’re identical. This is how I can assert to you that Intel pretty much has a fix ready before publication.
Same here, although I started with the K5.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Does it matter? Their product is superior in a critical aspect.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
My AMD k6 was great!
I had trouble with my slot-A Athlon 750 back in the day.
I bought the cheapest, trash motherboard with the even more trash Via KX133 chipset on it. The KT133/KT266 went on to be a pretty much legendary value, but that KX133 was basically beta-quality. Should have spent the extra $20 on the AMD-750 chipset instead, but you live, you learn.
My next one was a socket A with a KT133A, ran like a top with a heavily overvolted/overclocked Duron, haven't had any trouble since (Athlon XP, Athlon64).
Got my eye on a Ryzen 2400G for my next machine. Well, for home.
For work, I'm looking at dual 24 core Epycs...
It doesn't matter how good the engineer designing the CPU is. They are given the specs for the CPU. During the design they have to make choices to achieve the requirements and any choices that they feel uncomfortable about will be sent up to management to be signed off on. You can be certain that any design choices that trade speed for security in order to make the requirements will have had management made aware and sign off. Upper management at Intel, in this case but at all chip designing companies, have a roadmap for their processors and the engineers made the best trade-offs they thought to meet their goals. Management was more concerned on meeting their goals than putting out secure chips.
I hope everyone in the lower ranks kept their emails with the sign-offs.
30% Informative
40% Flamebait
30% Interesting
So the question is, did I get modded down by employees of Intel for saying nice things about AMD, by employees of AMD for saying mean things about ATI, or employees of VIA? No, wait, couldn't be that last one, their computer would have crashed before they got there.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"