In today’s “agentic” world, everyone seems to have forgotten approximately everything we used to know about security. And this new CPU is going all in on value speculation. Delightful.
Maybe if “cyber” models get good enough at exploiting speculation attacks, people will start demanding equipment that is less prone to these attacks.
aarch64 has a CPU mode, DIT (Data Independent Timing), specifically for allowing software to request all fancy value prediction stuff to be disabled for the duration of processing of sensitive data.
(doesn't help when the attack target is general-purpose/user-controlled code leaking things, but if you're relying on a process not leaking memory plainly available to it without full careful control of what the process runs, you've already been fully-SOL on that for decades and nothing has nor will nor can change about that)
No way, ARM screwed this up less than Intel and at least allows user code to access the control bit. Intel’s equivalent, DOITM, is not accessible at CPL3.
I think security is going to get devalued in the near future. The safest strategy is going to be to need as little as possible of the stuff that you need to keep secret. And you won't keep that stuff on a device that is shared in any manner, or maybe even connected anywhere.
amluto · · focus · HN ↗
Maybe if “cyber” models get good enough at exploiting speculation attacks, people will start demanding equipment that is less prone to these attacks.
archipelago123 · · focus · HN ↗
Attacker: Oh wait, I can run any code? I already own the machine...
debugnik · · focus · HN ↗
Any side effects from speculation machinery can easily become a side-channel to infer values across security boundaries.
samrus · · focus · HN ↗
dzaima · · focus · HN ↗
(doesn't help when the attack target is general-purpose/user-controlled code leaking things, but if you're relying on a process not leaking memory plainly available to it without full careful control of what the process runs, you've already been fully-SOL on that for decades and nothing has nor will nor can change about that)
amluto · · focus · HN ↗
scotty79 · · focus · HN ↗