3 ms·
isn’t every attack based on speculative execution actually just an attack over shared mutable state? i.e., if the branch predictions, cache, and so on weren’t b
by colinsane 3y ago
isn’t every attack based on speculative execution actually just an attack over shared mutable state? i.e., if the branch predictions, cache, and so on weren’t both shared and mutable, speculative execution wouldn’t be so problematic?
- nine_k 3y agoIndeed. Not just shared, but shared across security domains, e.g. across OS processes, or across the kernel / userspace boundary. Speculating within one security domain would not be problematic, because anything such speculation allows to glean is already accessible normally. This is sort of similar to having a single reference to a mutable object, which is also safe.