IT Security Stack Exchange
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Questions tagged [spectre]

A side-channel vulnerability affecting modern microprocessors that perform branch prediction like Intel, AMD, ARM, Sparc and PowerPC allowing user processes to read memory belonging to other processes. Affects Linux, OS X, and Windows. Published in January 2018.

A side-channel vulnerability affecting modern microprocessors that perform branch prediction like Intel, AMD, Sparc V9, ARM and PowerPC CPUs allowing user processes to read memory belonging to other processes. Affects a wide range of OSes like Linux, OS X, AIX, Solaris and Windows. Published in January 2018.

The attack exploits speculative instruction execution that results from CPU branch prediction, coupled with traditional cache timing attacks in order to learn the contents of another process' memory space.

See full attack details at https://spectreattack.com

See our canonical question on this site at Meltdown and Spectre Attacks

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How to select a CPU to buy for the best security?

Various versions of Spectre, Meltdown, Foreshadow and ZombieLoad make it quite the jungle trip to navigate which CPUs are affected, how to mitigate them. Right now, my problem is that I need a new computer but I want to make sure that I buy the most…
Teekin
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Do I need microcode update if I update Kernel?

There is a CPU vulnerability Microarchitectural Fill Buffer Data Sampling. I use a Linux OS and I think to fix Microarchitectural Fill Buffer Data Sampling you need to update intel microcode or update kernel to a fixed one…
user209346
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How to fix Spectre variant 3a and variant 4?e

How I can fix CVE-2018-3640 [rogue system register read] aka 'Variant 3a' and CVE-2018-3639 [speculative store bypass] aka 'Variant 4'? My status for them is VULNERABLE. I have Intel CPU and using kernel 4.17. I read on a site there is a framework…
user183433
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Meltdown and Spectre regarding Firewalls and Sandboxing

I don't deeply understand Meltdown and Spectre -- all I know is that they are basically keylogging-like vulnerabilities within the CPU, which bypass any application layer stuff; correct me if I'm wrong. I want to know the following: Why is…
izb3st
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Adobe Flash and Meltdown / Spectre

Many browsers have received updates to protect against the Meltdown and Spectre attacks. I presume these patches relate (solely) to JavaScript execution within the browser. Java in the browser is as good as dead, so that's not affected. But even…
Maarten Bodewes
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Spectre on AMD K7 generation : exploitable, in the real world?

Considering AMD K7-family (Ahtlon XP...) 32-bit only processors, have there been any published exploits (viz "Spectre" type attacks) or indications that such would be even remotely possible in practice ? While in theory, I understand, similar…
NimbUs
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Spectre Proof of Concept (PoC) Speculative Execution - Checking for value

Inspired by this question and based on this: Why does me unpatched sytsem *appear* to be not vulenrable by Spectre? Figured out I will open a new question, instead of "polluting" somebody else question with questions. I wrote this code: It should…
dev
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Clamping the array index - is this a good idea for the Javascript Spectre mitigation?

From the Spectre document I learned that the attack can be successful because the compiler generates a memory read instruction that refers to the invalid array index. And even though the instruction is normally only executed after checking the array…
szulat
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Are MCUs (Like arduinos) effected by Meltdown?

I am curious if Microcontrolers are effected by the vulnerabilities of Meltdown and Spectre. These devices are not specifically CPUs, and do not run Operating Systems per-say. I'm not really sure I understand the whole speculative execution attack,…
j0h
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Are Meltdown and Spectre complementary and used together

Meltdown and Spectre have both been announced at the same time, almost always in the same sentence. Is there a connection, other than timing and the fact that they attack chips? Are they used together in tandem to exploit a system? Or is it just…
Goose
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How are exploits like Meltdown and Spectre noticed?

From the brief research that I have done both Meltdown and Spectre were primarily found by the same person (Jann Horn (Google Project Zero)). How are such exploits normally noticed/found?
Karan Shishoo
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What is the impact and threat of Spectre in Javascript?

If you have looked into this demo of Spectre in JavaScript: Did I get it right that only current site memory can be accessed, due to site isolation etc? I saw there is also an addon to detect attackts (Spectroscope). Can somebody describe the…
dev
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Is Meltdown/Spectre mitigation necessary in virtual machine as well as in hypervisor?

I am running virtual machines in kvm/qemu hypervisor. The hypervisor has Meltdown/Spectre mitigation enabled in kernel. Is it necessary that virtual machines have the Meltdown/Spectre mitigation enabled as well, or is the protection provided by the…
Martin Vegter
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Can someone explain in layman terms how Spectre and Meltdown expose protected data

I'm working on a document about them and I think I understand it general what happens -> by exploiting the CPUs memory caching and speculative execution but I'm a little lost of how protected data is actually exposed. So if I understand speculative…
PruitIgoe
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Mitigation of Spectre and Meltdown affecting host OS from guest OS (Virtualbox)

I don't know all the details of Spectre and Meltdown, but the way I understand it is that they allow reading from memory, not writing to it. Also, I read that at least Spectre can get out of the virtual machine and therefore also affect the host OS.…
reed
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