As pointed out elsewhere, the attack requires kernel-level access, and anyone with that access can do a lot of damage anyway.
And the flaw can be fixed (there’s a fix out), it’s just that there’s no remediation once the flaw has been exploited.
anyone with that access can do a lot of damage anyway.
it’s just that there’s no remediation once the flaw has been exploited.
One of these things is not like the other.
They’re intrinsically linked, in fact. If you have kernel access, you can do any number of things, including but not limited to persistent rootkits. I agree that this bug is one step further, since it affects the processor itself, but if somebody has ring 0 access that shouldn’t, you already have problems.
Read it again, in context. What they said is perfectly valid.
Yeah, turning an exploit into one that survives a fresh install is a big deal.
It’s always been a thing that the only way to completely be safe after malware is yeeting the old system and getting a new one…
And even then there have been actively exploited issues where the system gets re-infected when reloading the data from a backup. (My memory is a bit rusty on that one, but it was just data being restored, nothing that should install anything)
I wish CPUs would all have a fuse bit to permanently disable those “security co-processors”. They are running who knows what and don’t do the average user any good.
at this point all major chipmakers have proven that innovation is dead, nobody cares about “boring” fratures. We can finally take a step back and reflect on why did we end up here
Capitalism
He says, from his iPhone.
