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Five academics from the Tampere University of Technology in Finland and the Technical University of Havana in Cuba have discovered another flaw in Intel's Hyper-Threading (HT) technology that attackers could use to steal encrypted data users, as ZDNet reports today.
Other processors using simultaneous multithreading (SMT) technology may also be affected by the bug, but to date, only Intel's HT has been confirmed vulnerable. SMT and HT are technologies that can run two or more computing threads on the same CPU core. Intel enables two threads per physical kernel with its HT technology.
More threads, more danger
The five researchers discovered a new vulnerability in Intel's HT technology, which could leak encrypted data from internal processor processes. They rated the vulnerability as an indirect attack because attackers could use inconsistencies in run times or power consumption to gain additional information that could help them bypass data encryption.
The vulnerability, which researchers have dubbed PortSmash, allows attackers to create a malicious process that can run alongside another legitimate process by using the parallel threading capabilities of HT. This malicious process can then leak information about the legitimate process and allow the attacker to reconstruct the encrypted data processed in the legitimate process.
Attack PoC Made Available
The researchers also provided proof of concept (PoC) of the attack, demonstrating that it is feasible and not just theoretical. This PoC can now also be reassigned and modified by attackers to launch a real attack against the owners of systems using Intel processors.
Attacks will require malicious code to be already running on users' computers, but researchers have noted that administrative privileges are not required. Therefore, it should not be too difficult to apply the attack in practice.
The attack should be particularly effective against web and cloud hosting services that share the same physical kernel with multiple users, thus increasing the chances of success of the PortSmash attack.
Intel made a patch for motherboard manufacturers yesterday when researchers released the flaw. In a statement, Intel encouraged application developers to also use code not vulnerable to aux channel attacks, but this may be easier said than done:
"Intel has received notification of the search.This problem does not depend on a speculative run and therefore is not related to Spectrum, Meltdown or L1 terminal fault. it is not unique to Intel platforms Research on secondary channel analysis methods is often centered on Software or software libraries can be protected against these problems by using secure development practices by the developers. Secondary Channels Protecting our customers' data and ensuring the security of our products is a top priority for Intel and we will continue to work with our customers, partners and researchers to understand and mitigate all identified vulnerabilities, "said Intel. in a statement.
Second flaw found in Intel HT this year
PortSmash is the second major vulnerability discovered by Intel (and potentially other SMT technologies) this year. The first was Foreshadow, or the L1 Terminal Fault (L1TF), which prompted the founder of the security-aware OpenBSD operating system to disable Intel support in new versions of the operating system.
Intel itself may have begun to listen to this advice because the company's Core i7-9700K will be the first Core i7 in the company's history to be delivered without HT.
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