Discovered a new vulnerability in Intel processors called Spoiler that does not affect AMD processors

Report highlights that all Intel Core processors from 1st Generation to 9th Generation suffer from the Spoiler vulnerability.

New problems for Intel. In addition to the problems with the 10nm lithography, which arrived at the end of the year with several delays, a demand exceeding production capacity and Specter and Meltdown, Spoiler is now added. This new vulnerability has been found thanks to researchers from the Worcester Polytechnic Institute and the University of Lübeck. This problem would only affect Intel processors from the 1st Generation Intel Core to the current 9th Generation.

A new vulnerability appears in Intel processors

Said finding made by the Worcester Polytechnic Institute and the University of Lübeck it is in the micro architecture of the processors. As reported, the problem is that it would reveal critical information regarding the mapping of physical pages in user space processes.

"The security hole can be exploited by a limited set of instructions, which is visible in all generations of Intel from the first generation of Intel Core processors, regardless of the operating system used and also works from virtual machines and space environments isolated.

The root cause of the problem is that the data load and copy operations in main memory are speculatively executed and the processor resolves the dependency when the full physical address bits are available. The physical address bits are a sensitive piece of information to contain information and, if they are available to the user space, they elevate the user to carry out other architectural attacks ”, explains Professor Moghimi.

Researchers have highlighted that this vulnerability is virtually impossible to correct using software. It seems that the problem can only be solved at the hardware level, so there is no solution. The only way to correct the problem would be to modify the design of the next processors. Spoiler also only affects Intel, freeing AMD processors from this vulnerability.