Meltdown: Reading Kernel Memory from User Space
This article presents Meltdown, a novel attack that exploits a vulnerability in the way the processor enforces memory isolation.
Meltdown: Reading Kernel Memory from User Space Read MoreSpectre is a class of security vulnerabilities that affects modern microprocessors that perform branch prediction and other forms of speculation. On most processors, the speculative execution resulting from a branch misprediction may leave observable side effects that may reveal private data to attackers. For example, if the pattern of memory accesses performed by such speculative execution depends on private data, the resulting state of the data cache constitutes a side channel through which an attacker may be able to extract information about the private data using a timing attack.
—Wikipedia, “Spectre (security vulnerability)”
Meltdown was published simultaneously with the Spectre Attack, which exploits a different CPU performance feature, called speculative execution, to leak confidential information. Meltdown is distinct from Spectre in several ways, notably that Spectre requires tailoring to the victim process’s software environment but applies more broadly to CPUs and is not mitigated by KAISER. Since the publication of Meltdown and Spectre, several prominent follow-up works exploited out of order and speculative execution mechanisms to leak information across other security domains.
—CACM, “Meltdown: Reading Kernel Memory from User Space“
This article presents Meltdown, a novel attack that exploits a vulnerability in the way the processor enforces memory isolation.
Meltdown: Reading Kernel Memory from User Space Read More