Category Archives: SPECTRE

Google Chrome shifts browser architecture to thwart Spectre attacks

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Google Chrome is enabling a new security feature called Site Isolation in response to the set of speculative execution side-channel attacks known as Spectre and Meltdown. One day after a new Spectre-like attack was disclosed, the newly enabled Site Isolation feature attempts to provide what Google’s security team believes is “the most effective mitigation” possible. This is the latest improvement for Chrome, widely considered to possess the best security features among different browsers. Spectre and Meltdown use the speculative execution feature of a machine’s processors to access memory that is supposed to be off-limits to users. Site Isolation aims to keep data in the same process so that a Spectre attack can’t siphon off important data. The security feature is available in the current version (Chrome 67) of Chrome on Windows, Mac, Linux and Chrome OS. The Chrome team is now working on extending the coverage to Android. The team […]

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Senators question vulnerability disclosure process after Spectre and Meltdown stumbles

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Shortcomings in the industry-led process for disclosing software and hardware bugs could rear their heads again, U.S. senators said Wednesday at a hearing on the Spectre and Meltdown chip flaws. “While these vulnerabilities seemed to have been patched reasonably well, what about the next one? And we might not know about it until it’s too late,” Florida Democrat Bill Nelson said at the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee hearing. Lawmakers are pondering what can be done to improve the complex vulnerabilities disclosure process, which involves spreading enough word among vendors to address a bug but not so much as to risk leaking information before patches are ready. “We need to consider additional ways to require the federal government’s equipment suppliers to promptly notify [the Department of Homeland Security] of potential breaches or vulnerabilities that could weaken our federal systems,” Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., said at the hearing. The worry is always that foreign governments […]

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CVE-2018-3693: New Spectre 1.1 Vulnerability Emerges

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The latest variant of the Spectre series of bugs have been discovered — the newest addition is the Spectre 1.1 vulnerability which is tracked under the CVE-2018-3693 security advisory. Like previous iterations it leverages a flaw that can create … Continue reading CVE-2018-3693: New Spectre 1.1 Vulnerability Emerges→

Nessus ADV180002: Microsoft SQL Server January 2018 Security Update (Meltdown) (Spectre)

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I have a MS Server 2012 r2 running ArcServe 17.5, which uses MSSQL Server Express 2014. When Nessus runs a scan of this system, I am getting the plugin 105613 – ADV180002: Microsoft SQL Server January 2018 Security Update (Me… Continue reading Nessus ADV180002: Microsoft SQL Server January 2018 Security Update (Meltdown) (Spectre)→

Patch Tuesday — June 2018

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PC Market Declined Almost 5 Percent in Q2 2016

In this month’s Patch Tuesday, Microsoft released a disabled-by-default patch for Spectre 4, Adobe plugs a zero-day Flash vulnerability that can be exploited via Excel, and there are fixes for DNS, black screens, and Cortana.

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Intel Faces Yet Another Speculative Execution Flaw in Its CPUs

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As predicted by security researchers, the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities announced this year were just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to security issues related to the speculative execution feature of modern CPUs. In coordination with oper… Continue reading Intel Faces Yet Another Speculative Execution Flaw in Its CPUs→