New vulnerability Specter v4, which affects Intel, AMD and ARM processors, has been detected and this year is being especially difficult for computer security.
On January 3, the Specter and Meltdown vulnerabilities were revealed, which affect Intel, AMD and ARM processors. These vulnerabilities are at the physical level, at the silicon level, therefore they cannot be corrected, only mitigated. Since then the investigations have not stopped. If a few weeks ago the existence of Specter NG was made known, now Specter v4 has been announced, which affects the speculative storage of Intel, AMD and ARM processors. Obviously, new patches will have to be released to solve the problems.
Specter v4 affects Intel, AMD and ARM processors
Computer security is being seriously compromised this year and there are many vulnerabilities at the hardware level and many problems at the software level that are being detected. Perhaps, the focus has been more on security, given that attacks are increasing and many access doors were being found to access third-party information.
Like the first Specter wave, this vulnerability affects Intel, AMD and ARM processors, because it compromises a key element in the chips of the three manufacturers: the speculative storage buffer.
Specter V3 allows remote execution from a browser, which must be infected with malicious code, which can access sensitive data, since this new vulnerability allows access to the speculative storage buffer, while telling the processor that it is being read from another sector within the same processor. The attacker can have access to private information, such as email addresses, passwords, or credit card numbers.
The speculative buffer is a segment of the processor where data is stored that is reviewed before we write to the corresponding memory addresses. The buffer checks the data and if the memory address read is correct, the data is written. If not, they are discarded.
This Specter v4 vulnerability has been located by Google and Microsoft researchers, who affirm that no attacker has ever exploited this vulnerability or rather, there is no evidence that it has been exploited by an attacker. Be that as it may, manufacturers are warned and they have already sounded the alarm, especially to large Data Centers.
Intel and AMD have confirmed that they are working on special patches for their processors, in addition to ARM and IBM, who would also be developing solutions for their chips. Microsoft will implement new updates to solve the problem and Google will do the same with Android. We do not have data from Apple, but we assume that it will be developing measurements for its operating systems.
Source: BPC
