Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
Here are some details on how to disable TSX:
Latest Intel CPUs patched against new speculative execution side-channel attacks
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/ne...nerabilities-in-november-2019-platform-update
"A new speculative vulnerability called ZombieLoad 2 found in the TSX Asynchronous Abort (TAA) and targeting the Transactional Synchronization Extensions (TSX) feature in Intel processors was also fixed.
According to Intel, the CVE-2019-11135 is caused by a TSX Asynchronous Abort condition on some CPUs that use speculative execution which may allow a locally authenticated attacker to potentially enable information disclosure via a side-channel.
The list of affected Intel CPUs is quite extensive and it includes their Cascade Lake line of processors(the full list is available in the advisory), which are not affected by previously disclosed speculative execution attacks like RIDL and Fallout.
Intel urges users of affected processors to immediately update to the latest firmware versions provided by the system manufacturer known to address this issue. Microsoft released security updates designed to mitigate the ZombieLoad 2 vulnerability in the Windows Server and Windows Client OS editions.
Redmond also provides advice on how to disable the Intel TSX capability on systems with vulnerable Intel processors to block potential Zombieload 2 speculative execution side-channel attacks.
The following command allows you to set a registry key to disable Intel TSX on your Windows machine via the Command Prompt:
reg add "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Kernel" /v DisableTsx /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
If you want to re-enable the Intel TSX capability, you can do it with this command:
reg add "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Kernel" /v DisableTsx /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f
Finally, the security world has reached the inevitable conclusion, they can't trust Intel CPU's, and due to the overwhelming task at hand to replace every compromised Intel CPU in the World, until that happens they are discussing going to a "Zero Trust" philosophy.
Security is Only as Strong as the Weakest Link
Clif Triplett, 21 NOV 2019
https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/opinions/strong-weakest-link/
"...Today another major foundational element, computer processors, are in the media and facing a similar challenge to that of Microsoft. Recently discovered defects in Intel’s computer processor chips - which make up about 90 percent of the world’s computer processors and nearly 99 percent of the server chips in the data centers serving the internet - have a vulnerability that could leave sensitive data exposed.
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Since the initial disclosure of Intel’s design flaw in January of 2018, seven total exploits have been uncovered: Meltdown, Spectre, Foreshadow, Zombieload, RIDL, Fallout, and SWAPGS Attack.
The exploits continue to evolve and the latest variant of Zombieload was found just last week. While patches exist to address these known exploits, they have a significant negative effect on computer performance and have not been universally adopted.
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It is unlikely that consumers will ever be able to fully assume complete trust in the foundation of their systems, and thus companies and organizations must implement a “ zero trust” strategy moving forward. With more and more technology participants in our systems, each bringing their own vulnerabilities, we will continue to experience security risk and not be able to fully trust our hardware or software system building blocks.
...
The zero trust philosophy or approach to design incorporates the belief that each component, connection, or even system user could be potentially compromised and represents a risk. This has been a long-practiced concept for our most critical systems, but today it must become a more common practice since so many of our systems have become key to business operations, safety and our personal data security.
Designing around potential risk unfortunately means investigating companies and their products to identify the risk they may represent, and avoiding companies with products we cannot trust, and reversely, gravitating towards those that prize both performance and security in equal measure.
We unfortunately have seen that when these priorities are ignored, the consequences can be devastating. A zero trust philosophy can help mitigate the risks that are endemic to the technology landscape today. Today more than ever before, we must ask vendors who represent the foundation to our systems who will be targets of attack to once again significantly step up their commitment and resourcing to their cybersecurity capabilities in protecting their platforms and our businesses."
Flood of New Advisories Expose Massive Gaps in Firmware Security
by Eclypsium on November 19, 2019
https://securityboulevard.com/2019/...ies-expose-massive-gaps-in-firmware-security/
"Last week Intel and Cisco published security advisories revealing dozens of vulnerabilities in firmware and hardware that impact laptops, servers and routers. Intel disclosed an incredible 77 new vulnerabilities across a broad spectrum of components, including Intel CPUs, BMC, CSME, TXT, SGX, AMT, TPM and more.
There were two critical and 34 high severity bugs, some of which would allow an unauthenticated user to potentially enable escalation of privileges, information disclosure or denial of service.
Two notable vulnerabilities included a timing leakage on Intel firmware-based TPM (fTPM) and an ST Microelectronics’ TPM chip that allows an attacker to recover 256-bit private keys from digital signature schemes, and an updated Zombieload Attack disclosure from Graz University of Technology and KU Leuven that impacts more recent processors, including Intel’s line of Cascade Lake CPUs.
Eclypsium also released an update to our research on widespread vulnerabilities in Windows drivers involving more than 40 drivers from at least 20 different vendors, adding a new disclosure about a PMX driver rated as a high severity vulnerability. Cisco added to the week’s tally with multiple vulnerabilities impacting the firmware of their small business routers.
As a result, the listing of firmware vulnerabilities reported to the National Vulnerability Database in 2019 is up more than 30% from last year, and is six times larger than three years ago. For IT teams tasked with protecting infrastructure from attack, the challenge of keeping up with firmware updates has grown significantly, and the severity of the issues demonstrates how big the gaps are in firmware security.
Don’t expect the rate of growth in firmware vulnerabilities to wane..."
...more in the article...
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![[IMG]](images/storyImages/cacheout-100828067-medium.jpg)
New 'CacheOut' attack targets Intel processors, with a fix arriving soon PCWORLD.COM | Jan 28, 2020
Researchers claim that the latest side-channel exploit against Intel processors can be used to leak a targeted set of data, rather than just a random bunch of bytes...Vasudev, Robbo99999, tilleroftheearth and 2 others like this. -
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Intel Discovers Security Flaw in CSME Firmware tomshardware.com | Feb 13, 2020
![[IMG]](images/storyImages/JxkHm2638mxGcECmJJj7VC-650-80.jpg)
The flaw means vulnerability to privilege escalation, denial of service and information disclosure.
Intel’s internal team this week disclosed a new vulnerability in the company’s Converged Security and Management Engine (CSME), which could allow privilege escalation, denial of service and information disclosure attacks against PCs powered by certain Intel CPUs.
The bug affects all Intel CPUs that come with a CSME microcontroller unit (MCU), with the exception of newer Ice Lake and Comet Lake processor generations. The vulnerability has a CVSS score of 8.2 out of 10, classifying it as “high severity.”
The firmware flaw is an improper authentication in a subsystem in Intel CSME versions 12.0 through 12.0.48, and versions 13.0-13.0.20 and 14.0-14.0.10 may still allow attackers to enable escalation of privilege, denial of service or information disclosure if they have local access to the device via some other bugs.
On Internet of things (IoT) devices, only firmware 12.0.56 is affected.Vasudev, Robbo99999, hmscott and 1 other person like this. -
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Intel Fends off PLATYPUS Vulnerability With Microcode Update tomshardware.com | Today
Linux users can find instructions for manually updating their firmware on Intel's Github page. However, it's likely that Microsoft and other OS vendors will include automated updates that include the new microcode.
For those with Dell/Alienware's, you all should expect more fun regarding bios updates. Either from own "must have to click on everything from the support page" or from Windows Updates(Dell use Microsoft's servers for all it's worth). The dreaded Plundervolt patch normally follow all new bios updates as a living nightmare and will most likely render your dear undervolt useless.
TS author @unclewebb is flooded with questions all over the web on how to get back the undervolt. So it's quite widespread. Many out there sit with tears from their sad eyes when they seeing their machines is rendered useless. Be very careful when you feeel for being a guinea pig. Not fun waking up the next morning seeing your Cpu have touched the dreaded 100C temp threshold
More about undervolt and Plundervolt here... BLACK LIST. Adjustable voltage control/turbo ratio limits are locked out with Win Updates/Bios upgradesLast edited: Nov 11, 2020Robbo99999, Vasudev, Mr. Fox and 2 others like this. -
Serious Intel Boot Guard Exploit Leaves Unpatched PCs hothardware.com | Nov 15, 2020
Attackers with physical access to a device can generally do the most damage to a machine. This remains true with CVE-2020-8705, where an attacker with physical access can gain control of the system firmware while the device resumes from a sleep state. This means there could be privilege escalations, data loss, and more depending on what the primary motives of the attacker. Therefore, Intel users need to patch their systems and prevent unwanted physical access.
According to Trammell Hudson, CVE-2020-8705, or “Sleep Attack,” occurs when Intel x86 computers enter the sleep state called “S3.” The sleep state turns off the CPU but keeps the DRAM powered, so the CPU state must be restored upon receiving a wake command. When this process starts, the firmware realizes that the DRAM still has power, and some bits of code are skipped, specifically the code checking part of the firmware.
Yeah, I expect Dell will be one of the first out with new firmware.
Hackers can use just-fixed Intel bugs to install malicious firmware on PCs arstechnica.com
Computer makers are in the process of patching Boot Guard. Have you installed it yet?
Yeah, I expect Dell will be one of the first out with new firmware. Because Boot Guard have become the main security component in their systems. @Mr. Fox just love this feature. I wonder why Dell prefer to be the Bellwether.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/the-throttlestop-guide.531329/page-1232#post-11054610
Last edited: Nov 15, 2020Vasudev, Maleko48 and tilleroftheearth like this. -
and another twist in the plundervolt saga:
https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2020/11/16/break-intel-sgx/
really, intel? come on...
and we're still left to suffer from that "fix" which stripped consumer choice of undervolting
hopefully this won't require quite an ugly ucode repair for us to deal with...luckily since it's a hardware point of contact exploit only...but any excuse to nerf old cpu performance will probably be eagerly taken advantage of to sell more units of latest-gen with few more mhz...
Maleko48, Vasudev, Starlight5 and 1 other person like this. -
Just to drop by an updated wallpaper
![[IMG]](images/storyImages/Intel-Exploit-4-K-v11-1.png)
https://i.postimg.cc/j5tcbm3y/Intel-Exploit-4-K-v11-1.png
As usual in 4K resolution. Maybe someone can tell me how to arrange these lovely mascots as i start to run out of ideas
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Bump.
![[IMG]](images/storyImages/170x170_Intel-CPU.jpg)
Microsoft releases new Windows 10 Intel CPU microcode updates Jan 27, 2012
Microsoft has released a new set of Intel microcode updates for Windows 10 20H2, 2004, 1909, and older versions to fix bugs impacting multiple Intel CPU families.ajc9988, etern4l, Vasudev and 1 other person like this. -
AMD Warns Of Potential Spectre-Style Zen 3 Processor Security Vulnerability sweclockers.com
Intel was raked over the coals three years ago when Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities were first discovered that could affect its consumer and enterprise processors. The company addressed the side-channel exploits with patches and subsequent hardware revisions, but AMD is now coming under the microscope for a side-channel attack that could affect processors based on its Zen 3 architecture...
At this time, AMD has provided instructions via a security bulletin [ PDF] on how to disable PSF, as it is enabled by default on Zen 3 processors. The company has also proposed a Linux patch to enable/disable the functionality. We'd assume that AMD is working with Microsoft on patches for Windows-based operating systems as well.
However, since it has not yet seen any real-world attacks that have taken advantage of the PSF, AMD is recommending that most customers leave the feature enabled for now. We'd imagine that this could be due to a performance hit that might be realized when disabling the feature, but AMD didn't provide any guidance on that potential in its support document.Last edited: Apr 4, 2021KING19, Starlight5, dmanti and 3 others like this. -
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New Spectre Exploits Beat All Mitigations: Fixes to Severely Degrade Performance tomshardware.com | Today
Researchers from two universities have discovered several new variants of Spectre exploits that affect all modern processors from AMD and Intel with micro-op caches. Existing Spectre mitigations do not protect the CPUs against potential attacks that use these vulnerabilities. Meanwhile, researchers believe that mitigating these vulnerabilities will cause more significant performance penalties than the fixes for previous types of Spectre exploits. However, it remains unknown how easy these vulnerabilities are to exploit in the real world, so the danger may be limited to directed attacks.
Low Risk?
One thing to keep in mind is that exploiting micro-ops cache vulnerabilities is extremely tricky as such malware will have to bypass all other software and hardware security measures that modern systems have and then execute a very specific type of attack that is unconventional, to say the least. To that end, chances that the new Spectre vulnerabilities will lead to widespread wrongdoings are rather low. Instead, they could be used for specific targeted attacks from sophisticated players, like nation-states.
New Spectre Chip Security Vulnerability Found That Leaves Billions Of PCs Still Defenseless hothardware.com | Today
Last edited: May 1, 2021Robbo99999, Ashtrix, Vasudev and 1 other person like this. -
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Intel isn't afraid of new Spectre vulnerabilities, but researchers say they should be techspot.com | 5 may, 2021
Intel believes that their processors are secure enough as it is
A few days ago, a report was published detailing three novel Spectre vulnerabilities that exist inside the micro-op cache of all modern processors. Shortly after we wrote about it, Intel reached out to say that they don’t think the new vulnerabilities are a big problem. Their official statement reads: "Intel reviewed the report and informed researchers that existing mitigations were not being bypassed and that this scenario is addressed in our secure coding guidance. Software following our guidance already have protections against incidental channels including the uop cache incidental channel. No new mitigations or guidance are needed."
![[IMG]](images/storyImages/csm_hacker96_35873fb824.jpg)
Intel refutes claim that newly-uncovered Spectre vulnerability variants need patching with performance-leeching fixes
Have anyone seen a responce from AMD on the latest Spectre vulnerabilities?
A new Spectre vulnerability is costly to patch but nearly impossible to exploit techspot.com | 5 may, 2021
Will Spectre haunt CPUs forever?
TL;DR: Researchers from the University of Virginia and the University of California, San Diego discovered three Spectre vulnerabilities in AMD and Intel processors during their study of the micro-op cache. The vulnerabilities bypass existing Spectre mitigations, and the researchers predict that their proposed low-level fixes would incur an expensive performance penalty. However, they acknowledge that exploiting these might prove too difficult to justify harsh mitigations.
The three newly discovered vulnerabilities are in the design of the micro-op cache, a feature of modern CPUs present in AMD processors from 2017 onwards and Intel CPUs from 2011 onwards. The micro-op cache improves a processor’s performance by storing low-level instructions that are spawned as the processor breaks complex instructions down into computable arithmetic. It hasn’t been the subject of much investigative research, until now, because AMD and Intel document their micro-op cache designs poorly to conceal their proprietary designs.Last edited: May 4, 2021etern4l, Spartan@HIDevolution, inm8#2 and 2 others like this. -
CPU Vulnerabilities, Meltdown and Spectre, Kernel Page Table Isolation Patches, and more
Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by hmscott, Jan 2, 2018.
