Meltdown breaks the mechanism that keeps applications from accessing arbitrary system memory.Ĭonsequently, applications can access system memory. What is the difference between Meltdown and Spectre? Which cloud providers are affected by Meltdown?Ĭloud providers which use Intel CPUs and Xen PV as virtualization without having patches applied.įurthermore, cloud providers without real hardware virtualization, relying on containers that share one kernel, such as Docker, LXC, or OpenVZ are affected. In particular, we have verified Spectre on Intel, AMD, and ARM processors. More specifically, all modern processors capable of keeping many instructions in flight are potentially vulnerable. Which systems are affected by Spectre?Īlmost every system is affected by Spectre: Desktops, Laptops, Cloud Servers, as well as Smartphones. According to ARM, some of their processors are also affected. At the moment, it is unclear whether AMD processors are also affected by Meltdown. Currently, we have only verified Meltdown on Intel processors. We successfully tested Meltdown on Intel processor generations released as early as 2011. More technically, every Intel processor which implements out-of-order execution is potentially affected, which is effectively every processor since 1995 (except Intel Itanium and Intel Atom before 2013). Which systems are affected by Meltdown?ĭesktop, Laptop, and Cloud computers may be affected by Meltdown. There is also work to harden software against future exploitation of Spectre, respectively to patch software after exploitation through Spectre ( LLVM patch, MSVC, ARM speculation barrier header). There are patches against Meltdown for Linux ( KPTI (formerly KAISER)), Windows, and OS X. Has Meltdown or Spectre been abused in the wild? This may include passwords and sensitive data stored on the system. If your system is affected, our proof-of-concept exploit can read the memory content of your computer. However, your antivirus may detect malware which uses the attacks by comparing binaries after they become known. Unlike usual malware, Meltdown and Spectre are hard to distinguish from regular benign applications. While possible in theory, this is unlikely in practice. Can my antivirus detect or block this attack? The exploitation does not leave any traces in traditional log files. Can I detect if someone has exploited Meltdown or Spectre against me? Some analysts have warned that the threat is unique because it is an issue affecting hardware used in many computing systems.Questions & Answers Am I affected by the vulnerability? Researchers at Google showed how a hacker could exploit the flaw in many kinds of computer chips to get passwords, encryption codes and more, even though there have been no reports of any attacks using the vulnerability. The Intel chief executive promised speedy release of patches during his most high-profile public comments since the release of research highlighting vulnerabilities affecting the chips powering most modern PCs and many mobile devices. Krzanich said at the time that there was no information to suggest any loss of data from the Meltdown and Spectre flaws. "We have now identified the root cause of the reboot issue impacting Broadwell and Haswell platforms, and made good progress in developing a solution to address it," Shenoy said.Įarlier this month, Intel chief Brian Krzanich took the unusual step of addressing the security issue during a keynote ahead of the opening of the huge Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. In the meantime, computer users were advised to be vigilante with security practices. He expected details on when updated patches might be released to be available later this week. "We ask that our industry partners focus efforts on testing early versions of the updated solution so we can accelerate its release." "They may introduce higher than expected reboots and other unpredictable system behavior," Intel data center group executive vice president Navin Shenoy said in an online post. The US chip giant recommended that computer makers, cloud service providers, system manufacturers, software venders, and end users stop deployment of current versions of the patch. Intel posted a list of chip models that could be tripped up by the patch, meant to prevent hackers from taking advantage of so-called Meltdown and Spectre flaws to steal data.
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