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> if software backdoors were available and leaked to the public https://www.blackhat.com/us-15/briefings.html#the-memory-sinkhole-unleashing-an-x86-design-flaw
by rasz_pl 10y ago
> if software backdoors were available and leaked to the public
https://www.blackhat.com/us-15/briefings.html#the-memory-sinkhole-unleashing-an-x86-design-flaw-allowing-universal-privilege-escalation https://www.blackhat.com/us-15/briefings.html#the-memory-sin...
conveniently "discovered" by a 3 letter agency favorite principle contractor (Batelle Memorial Institute - have fun researching them) employee just after everybody switched to the next(fixed) cpu generation.
- qb45 10y agoI doubt that this can be used for VM escape because it requires access to the physical LAPIC and afaik hypervisors wouldn't allow VMs to touch this. It also doesn't work from userspace so pretty much all you can do with it is hacking SMM from a kernel running on the bare metal. Maybe useful for rootkits, but truth be told 3LAs seem to have no problem making non-SMM malware undetectable by commercial AVs. See stuxnet :) > conveniently "discovered" by a 3 letter agency favorite principle contractor Not sure what you are alluding to. 3LAs wouldn't want this to be known if it was their job, methinks.
- redblacktree 10y agoI think he's saying that the 3LAs knew about it for a long time, but publicly "discovered" the flaw when it was no longer useful to them (after everyone had upgraded)