Science

Intel Is Redesigning Its Processors To Improve Security

March 16, 2018 06:13·
Microsoft launches speculative attack bounty programme

Microsoft launches speculative attack bounty programme

Over the past couple of months, it has been incredible watching Chipzilla revise its position, in public and behind the scenes, over and over again. These two chips are used in every single Intel processor.

Now comes word via Intel that the company's next-gen Xeon and 8th-gen Intel Core processors - which are slated for release in the second half of 2018 - will include design changes created to combat variants of the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities. As such, Intel has been working closely with other tech companies to roll out software patches for known Meltdown and Spectre variants. For example, this could include a technique that can read sensitive memory from the kernel or another process. Variant 1 can be fixed by patching programs to thwart Spectre-based attacks. "We have redesigned parts of the processor to introduce new levels of protection through partitioning that will protect against both Variants 2 and 3".

Two weeks ago, Microsoft stepped in to help distribute Intel's Spectre and Meltdown fixes as individual vendors would have been too slow.

The company said that these protections are now being added to 8th Generation Intel Core processors and Intel Xeon Scalable processors (codenamed Cascade Lake).

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The exact technical details are still under wraps. The chips are due out in the second half of the year.

Krzanich says that you can think of this partitioning as additional "protective walls" between apps and user privilege levels to stop bad actors in their tracks. He also revealed that 100% of the products Intel has released over the last five years have now received "microcode updates" to patch the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities. These should be available from operating system and motherboard makers. One possibility is merely that the same software fixes the company has developed could be integrated at a chip-level. They're going to have to change their architecture but it's a bit light in detail. "However, what's not clear is quite how this will work and if it will completely defeat this type side channel attack".

With a beefed-up bug bounty, Microsoft may go some way to mitigate poor practices in flaw reporting and exposure.

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