3 ms·
There were multiple attack vectors and some of them were significantly better at leaking information with hyperthreading enabled but the basic cache side channe
by haimez 6y ago
There were multiple attack vectors and some of them were significantly better at leaking information with hyperthreading enabled but the basic cache side channel leak worked just fine in single core systems before kernel patches mitigated the impact by flushing hardware buffers as part of the context switch (at a significant performance cost)
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- wasdfff 6y agoIf you had a machine that was gapped could you disable the flushing?
- wokkel 6y agoAny machine that runs only verified code (ie. no JavaScript in the browser, no downloading nifty things and running them) don't need the flushes. Problem is (as shown by the Solarwind hack) even code you should be able to trust can be backdoored. However: if that is the attack vector, spectre and its' offspring are not your real concern: there are much more efficient and effective ways to compromise your machine if a blob of binary ends of being backdoored.