DailyPost 466
GOOGLED: VULNERABILITIES IN CHIP
While cyber breaches are legally mandated to intimated to the law enforcement agencies at least in all developed countries, what happens if the vulnerabilities pertain to the chip, hardware, the architecture itself? While doing specular memory research, Google discovered vulnerabilities in Intel & other chips. Chips would thus become the next target, if not being already targeted and we being completely unaware of it. With Intel, AMD &ARM all being impacted, literally it covers the whole spectrum of devices we use. Chip architecture is the latest and might be the final bastion to fall into the hackers lap.
Intel processors, with the x86-64 hardware has serious design vulnerability, now being popularly known as ’Meltdown,’ would impact billions of PCs the world over. Hackers can bypass the hardware barrier between applications in use, also the computer’s memory & can thus read a computer’s memory & steal passwords. Daniel Gruss says that Meltddown is “probably one of the worst CPU bugs ever found”. Intel CEO has denied the existence of any design issue& that the company is working on the fixes. The second Spectre, affects all chips from Intel, AMD & ARM. Potentially error-free applications can be tricked into giving up secret information.
Google’s Project Zero is tasked to hunt Zero Day vulnerabilities across world’s software / computer systems. Zero Day exploits are the first time discovery of a vulnerability. This is a tribute to the excellent quality of research being done by Google as generally chip was never in the surface area for hacks. Google informed affected companies about ”Spectre” flaw on 1st June 2017&”Meltdown” flaw before 28th July 2017. It got first reported in tech publication The Register.
The time lag in flaws becoming a public knowledge is noteworthy. The patches are on way as being claimed by different companies, nonetheless, the whole global digital ecosystem; chips, OS & hardware, has been put to immense risk.
ZERO DAY CHIP VULNERABILITY IS A NEW CYBER INSECURITY DIMENSION.
Sanjay Sahay