'Meltdown' / 'Spectre'
First details on secure Intel processors
After releasing microcode updates for all CPUs of the last five years, Intel is now also announcing new 'Xeon SP' and 'Core i' processors. These rely on a new hardware design to arm themselves against attacks such as 'Meltdown' and 'Spectre'.
With a new hardware design, Intel wants to protect future processors against attack scenarios in which certain mechanisms in the architecture of the CPUs are exploited to access protected memory areas, such as 'Meltdown' and 'Spectre'. According to CEO Brian Krzanich, both the next generation of 'Xeon Scalable Performance' processors, codenamed 'Cascade Lake', and the eighth generation of 'Core i' processors, both of which are due to be released in the second half of 2018, should be protected against 'Meltdown' and variant 2 of 'Spectre'. Variant 1 of 'Spectre' will continue to be defended against on the software side. Krzanich describes the changes to the design of the CPUs as "protective walls between individual applications and processes with different user rights".
The Intel boss also points out that so-called 'microcode' updates are now available for all Intel processors that have come onto the market in the last five years. The manufacturer promised this at the beginning of the year at CES 2018 in Las Vegas. Krzanich also admitted there that the updates affect the performance of the systems - something that has been the subject of heated debate since the first updates were released. Many users, as well as game manufacturers and cloud providers, experienced major losses. However, Intel had emphasized that the effects were not relevant for normal users and that they would not be noticed in practice. At CES, Krzanich then admitted that the impact could be greater for some workloads.
In response to 'Meltdown' and 'Spectre', Intel also revised its bug bounty program in February 2018 and significantly increased the rewards offered for detecting security vulnerabilities.
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