New NetSpectre Attack Can Steal CPU Secrets via Network Connections (bleepingcomputer.com)

Scientists published a paper Friday detailing a new Spectre-class CPU attack that can be carried out via network connections and does not require the attacker to host code on a targeted machine. From a report: This new attack --codenamed NetSpectre -- is a major evolution for Spectre attacks, which until now have required the attacker to trick a victim into downloading and running malicious code on his machine, or at least accessing a website that runs malicious JavaScript in the user's browser. But with NetSpectre, an attacker can simply bombard a computer's network ports and achieve the same results. Although the attack is innovative, NetSpectre also has its downsides (or positive side, depending on what part of the academics/users barricade you are). The biggest is the attack's woefully slow exfiltration speed, which is 15 bits/hour for attacks carried out via a network connection and targeting data stored in the CPU's cache.

Comments

15 bits per hour

[LittlePud]

It looks like a useless exploit for any practical purpose. I highly doubt the contents of a CPU cache would remain static for long enough to extract any information of value.

Does not know the domain

[mangastudent]

This latest "Net/S/M" calls them "gadgets", but they are fucking malware!

"Gadget" is a term of art from return-oriented programming; as the good Wiki introduces this:

[...] a computer security exploit technique that allows an attacker to execute code in the presence of security defenses such as executable space protection and code signing.

In this technique, an attacker gains control of the call stack to hijack program control flow and then executes carefully chosen machine instruction sequences that are already present in the machine's memory, called "gadgets"....

The "gadgets" are just convenient snippets of code that the attacker knows is already running in the target machine, like in commonly used DLLs or shared libraries.