Speculative Store Bypass: the new security breach in Intel processors discovered by Microsoft and Google

It seems that 2018 will not be a good year for Intel either, because after the scandal with the security flaw that affected its processors and that has generated rivers of ink in the written and digital press,The problems for the American company are reproducing

The reason is that a new vulnerability has been discovered in some of the manufacturer's latest processors A security breach that has jointly discovered by Microsoft and Google and has come to be called Speculative Store Bypass (Variant 4).This is a threat similar to the Specter and Meltdown vulnerabilities we already saw in early 2018.

New threat and new patches

The problem is also generated by the similarity with the problems we have already seen in the past, because Speculative Store Bypass (Variant 4) is so similar to SpectreIt is speculated that the possible patch that fixes it could end up affecting processor performance as in the previous case. And we already remember all the controversy that arose in this regard.

From Intel they assure that in servers there can be a decrease in performance between 2% and 8%

Intel announces that they already have their own security patches, which will be released in the coming weeks for all computers that have some of the affected processors. A protection that in principle will be a priority for those responsible and administrators of servers and systems and that is already being distributed in the form of microcode updates in beta form to OEMs so that they include them out of the box.

As the user wishes

In fact, with the patch that will be released, they assure that you will be able to choose between opting for greater protection or security. On the one hand, with reduced performance or, if desired, with better equipment performance at the cost of weaker protection.

With the arrival of the patch that they have already developed, from Intel they assure that the performance of the processor can be reduced in values ​​that oscillate between 2% and 8%, at least depending on the tests that have done on servers. When it comes to the usual daily tasks that we all carry out, Intel ensures that we will not see any loss of processing capacity, especially since the Update released to protect against Meltdown and protects against Speculative Store Bypass.

But the problem may not end here and it is that both AMD and ARM processors could be affected by the vulnerability as confirmed by their respective Parent companies.

Source | The Verge In Xataka Windows | Researchers find processor redesign won't prevent new threats similar to Meltdown and Spectre