Experts on processor security, including one referred to paper of Meltdown, reportedly disagree on whether fixing the Specter vulnerability requires hardware modifications or whether software updates can resolve the theme.
Meltdown's vulnerability could be the focus of future malware attacking processor operations even in hibernated systems, according to experts.
"OR theory του Spectre και του Meltdown είναι δύσκολο να κατανοηθεί”, δήλωσε ο Anders Fogh, ερευνητής ασφάλειας στο G-Data και εμπειρογνώμονας στον τομέα της ασφάλειας επεξεργαστών. “Αν χρησιμοποιήθηκε στο παρελθόν, θα ήταν μόνο σε προηγμένες attacks. But now that the research is out, it's very likely that we'll see Meltdown-based malware attacks relatively quickly.”
Meltdown – like the Specter – είναι ένα ελάττωμα που επιτρέπει αποκάλυψη πληροφοριών, αλλά από μόνο του δεν είναι κατάλληλο για κάποια απομακρυσμένη εκτέλεση κώδικα. Έτσι η ανησυχία των ερευνητών αφορά μελλοντικές συνδυαστικές επιθέσεις με άλλα malware, που θα έχουν σαν στόχο την υποκλοπή κωδικών accessand cryptographic credentials from unpatched systems.
Meltdown exploit can be done easily, but it is also relatively easy to repair, while in Specter, things are difficult from all opinions. Daniel Genkin, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Maryland, told the Register, which revealed the vulnerabilities, that an ongoing repair of Specter would require a redesign of the hardware.
Anders Fogh of G-Data questioned Genkin's point of view, indicating to the Registry that the repairs that have already been released increase the difficulty of such an attack.
"Withdrawal of processors is not possible anyway," he said. "The next step is to convince our customers to install the patches."
With Fogh's logic, however, those who have the necessary knowledge (see intelligence services) could find out how to exploit the vulnerability.
On the other hand, Werner Haas, a representative of Cyberus Technology and a member of one of the three independent teams that discovered and reported Meltdown, said that achieving a comprehensive protection against Specter is very simple and may involve an "ongoing process" with software fixes and hardware modifications.
"The Specter scenario is not that simple, as cross-application attacks are unlikely without even OS participation," said Haas.
"Therefore, a general solution like Meltdown seems unlikely. Therefore, I expect combined repairs to hardware / software defects along with the warning that the fight against Spectre will be an ongoing process. "
Here, let us mention that immediately after the announcement of the vulnerabilities CERT announced that the only way to repair Meltdown and Spectre was to replace the CPU.
"The underlying vulnerability is mainly driven by CPU architecture design choices," CERT researchers wrote. "The complete removal of the vulnerability requires the replacement of the vulnerable CPU."
A little later, and without knowing who was playing under the table, CERT recalled, and an Intel representative Agnes Kwan said: "CERT updated the vulnerability note to correct some inaccuracies."
Of course, we would not expect Intel to declare anything different, since the CERT report's assumption would cause strong turbulence in the company, with the corresponding cost.
