New attack methods work against Spectre mitigations in modern PC CPUs [Video]

Facepalm: Spectre-based flaws are still causing some security issues in recent Intel and AMD CPUs. A newly developed attack can bypass protection “barriers” OEMs added to avoid personal data leakage. However, microcode and system updates should already be available for affected systems.

Six years ago, security researchers unveiled two new vulnerability categories affecting process execution and data protection on CPUs. Meltdown and Spectre made a considerable splash in generalist and tech-focused media, and the latter is still haunting CPU manufacturers with new “Spectre-class” flaws discovered now and then.

Two researchers at ETH Zurich in Switzerland have exposeda novel attack that can “break” the barriers implemented by Intel and AMD against Spectre-like flaws. The new study focuses on the indirect branch predictor barrier (IBPB), a protection introduced by manufacturers to shield their newer CPUs against Spectre v2 (CVE-2017-5715) …