Yet another Intel GROUP of vulnerabilites: Microarchitectural Data Sampling

AKA: (names from here)

  • Zombieload
  • RIDL
  • Fallout

The MDS speculative execution side channel methods can be used to expose data in the following microarchitectural structures:

  • Store buffers: Temporary buffers to hold store addresses and data.
  • Fill buffers: Temporary buffers between CPU caches.
  • Load ports: Temporary buffers used when loading data into registers.

These structures are much smaller than the L1D, and therefore hold less data and are overwritten more frequently. It is also more difficult to use MDS methods to infer data that is associated with a specific memory address, which may require the malicious actor to collect significant amounts of data and analyze it to locate any protected data.

Article lists mitigation attempts as detailed by Intel.

Edit: Crap. Merge this thread with the other one.

3 posts were merged into an existing topic: More Intel CPU Speculative Bugs