INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
reverse-engineered the L1D cache way predictor in AMD silicon in order to discover two new potential attack vectors.Given all the attention
released a paper detailing the vulnerabilities which AMD was informed of back in August 2019, although as mentioned, a fix has yet to be
deployed.The pair of exploits, dubbed Collide+Probe and Load+Reload, are side channel attacks (in the same vein as Spectre) that manipulate
the aforementioned L1D cache predictor in order to access data that should otherwise be secure and unobtainable.The paper (a PDF shared on
highly-accurate memory-access traces of victims on the same physical core
While Load+Reload relies on shared memory, it does not invalidate the cache line, allowing stealthier attacks that do not induce any last
One of the researchers, Michael Schwarz, said that Collide+Probe has already been demonstrated being successfully leveraged via JavaScript
through both hardware and software mitigations, although no comment is made on whether software patches might be detrimental to system
performance (as you may recall, there was a big fuss about this when it came to fixing Meltdown and Spectre).AMD has yet to comment on the
restricted his academic freedom and independence.
