{"id":85422,"date":"2018-01-04T18:32:09","date_gmt":"2018-01-04T13:02:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs_admin.quickheal.com\/?p=85422"},"modified":"2018-01-09T19:07:41","modified_gmt":"2018-01-09T13:37:41","slug":"need-know-cpu-vulnerabilities-meltdown-spectre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.quickheal.com\/blogs\/need-know-cpu-vulnerabilities-meltdown-spectre\/","title":{"rendered":"What do we need to know about the CPU vulnerabilities Meltdown and Spectre?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>What <\/strong><strong>exactly <\/strong><strong>is<\/strong><strong> a<\/strong><strong> vulnerability<\/strong><strong>?<br \/>\n<\/strong>A security vulnerability (also known as a security hole) is a security flaw detected in a product that may leave it open to hackers and malware. Using such vulnerabilities, attackers can exploit the affected system\/product for their profit\u00a0in various ways.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What is an exploit?<br \/>\n<\/strong>Exploits are attacks performed on a system by taking advantage of a particular vulnerability the system might have. They are a sequence of commands which help malware gain privileged access and thereby take control of the infected system.<\/p>\n<p>For instance, the infamous exploit called EternalBlue took advantage of a security vulnerability in Microsoft&#8217;s implementation of the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol and launched the biggest ransomware attack in history called WannaCry.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What are Meltdown and Spectre?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Recently, researchers\u00a0had found\u00a0two major vulnerabilities in\u00a0Intel\u00a0processors\u00a0which were introduced\u00a0after 1995. These\u00a0vulnerabilities\u00a0are known as <strong>Meltdown<\/strong> (CVE-2017-5754) and\u00a0<strong>Spectre<\/strong> (CVE-2017-5753\u00a0and\u00a0CVE-2017-5715).<\/li>\n<li>Meltdown\u00a0and\u00a0Spectre\u00a0allow access\u00a0to\u00a0recently processed data on\u00a0the\u00a0system. Although\u00a0Intel\u00a0says\u00a0that\u00a0this\u00a0data\u00a0cannot\u00a0be\u00a0corrupted\u00a0or erased\u00a0from the system, attackers\u00a0can still steal\u00a0the\u00a0secure\u00a0data\u00a0which does compromise the\u00a0user\u2019s security.<\/li>\n<li>Both the\u00a0vulnerabilities\u00a0can be used by attackers to spy and steal secure data such as\u00a0passwords and encryption keys which are present in\u00a0the cache\u00a0memory.<\/li>\n<li>When these\u00a0vulnerabilities\u00a0were\u00a0first discovered,\u00a0Intel\u00a0considered\u00a0them as a small bug. However, later, researchers from Project Zero at Google revealed how severe these vulnerabilities can be.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>What does Melt<\/strong><strong>d<\/strong><strong>own<\/strong> <strong>(CVE-2017-5754) do?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Meltdown allows low privileged processes to gain access to high privileged kernel processes to steal system memory.<\/li>\n<li>It uses side channel information available on modern processors.<\/li>\n<li>As of now, Meltdown is known to affect only Intel processors.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>What does Spectre<\/strong> <strong>(CVE-2017-5753<\/strong><strong> and <\/strong><strong>CVE-2017-5715)<\/strong><strong> do?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Spectre\u00a0allows access\u00a0to\u00a0the memory of one\u00a0of the running\u00a0applications\u00a0by\u00a0another application.<\/li>\n<li>In order to optimize performance, most processors use a technique called \u2018Speculative Execution\u2019 where the processor tries to compute the next step or instruction to be executed in advance. If this is not required or if it&#8217;s wrong in its prediction, the CPU starts from the beginning of the program. Spectre affect&#8217;s processors using Speculative Execution by giving access of one process to the contents of another process running in the memory.<\/li>\n<li>Spectre vulnerability affects Intel, ARM, and AMD processors.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>How do these vulnerabilities affect me?<br \/>\n<\/strong>If your device has Intel, AMD or ARM Cortex-A Processor with Operating Systems such as Microsoft, Linux, Mac or Android, you may experience system performance issues. The severity of the slowdown is, however, still unclear.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What do I do?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Contact your Operating System vendor or system manufacturer and apply any available security updates as soon as they are available.<\/li>\n<li>Apply all recommended security patches whenever they are available.<\/li>\n<li>Keep Automatic Updates ON.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Subject Matter Experts<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Alisha Salunke, Shalaka Patil, Suvarna Trigune, Shriram Munde | Quick Heal Security Labs<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Content references:<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/newsroom.Intel.com\/news\/Intel-responds-to-security-research-findings\/<br \/>\nhttps:\/\/www.amd.com\/en\/corporate\/speculative-execution<br \/>\nhttps:\/\/developer.arm.com\/support\/security-update<br \/>\nhttps:\/\/googleprojectzero.blogspot.in\/2018\/01\/reading-privileged-memory-with-side.html<br \/>\nhttps:\/\/security.googleblog.com\/2018\/01\/todays-cpu-vulnerability-what-you-need.html<br \/>\nhttps:\/\/portal.msrc.microsoft.com\/en-US\/security-guidance\/advisory\/ADV180002<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What exactly is a vulnerability? A security vulnerability (also known as a security hole) is a security flaw detected in a product that may leave it open to hackers and malware. Using such vulnerabilities, attackers can exploit the affected system\/product for their profit\u00a0in various ways. What is an exploit? Exploits are attacks performed on a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":85423,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[289,24,75,5,36],"tags":[1560,1561],"class_list":["post-85422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cyber-safety","category-malware","category-microsoft-windows","category-security","category-security-patch","tag-cpu-vulnerabilities","tag-meltdown-and-spectre"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.quickheal.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85422"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.quickheal.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.quickheal.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.quickheal.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.quickheal.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85422"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.quickheal.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85422\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85447,"href":"https:\/\/www.quickheal.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85422\/revisions\/85447"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.quickheal.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.quickheal.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.quickheal.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.quickheal.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}