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Reverse Engineering X86 Processor Microcode
- d33 9y agoI only skimmed through, but... was there no crypto that needed to be broken in order to hack microcode?
- moonbug22 9y agoIt's signed.
- zkms 9y agoFrom the paper > Our analysis focuses on the AMD K8/K10 microarchitecture since these CPUs do not use cryptographic signatures to verify the integrity and authenticity of microcode updates. Note that Intel started to cryptographically sign microcode updates in 1995 [15] and AMD started to deploy strong cryptographic protection in 2011 [15]. We assume that the underlying microcode update mechanism is similar, but cannot analyze the microcode updates since we cannot decrypt them.
- d33 9y agoSo basically they found a way to change microcode in ten-year-old processors... though, it's still impressive.
- pjmlp 9y agoGiven the current state of PC market, there are plenty of those processors around.
- orclev 9y agoI was kind of disappointed this wasn't on a modern processor. Finding a way to hack microcode updates on a modern Intel CPU would be HUGE, both as an attack vector, and because the Intel ME unit is a binary black box that prevents any modern Intel CPU from being completely security audited.
- hidiegomariani 9y agoimpressive
- jsnell 9y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15035408 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15035408
- phkahler 9y agoThis seems like a really complex addition to the hardware. My first thought was that when process scaling fails and IF instruction sets stabilize more, they may be able to remove this flexibility and gain some power/area/speed benefits. My second thought was - maybe Intel already does that when a CPU has been out a while, they could bake the microcode more firmly into gates after it's been out a while.
- _pmf_ 9y agoIt's very inspiring that the systems responsible for running civilization are corporate secrets.