It was discovered by Hannes Frederic SUEß from the Google team. This issue has been assigned a CVSS v3 rating of 5.8. A serious vulnerability has been found in the Linux Kernel. This vulnerability can be exploited to cause a remote code execution. It was discovered by the Google team and is being referred to as ‘Spectre’. The researchers discovered that there is a branch target exploitability through Speculative Execution and Lazy Folding. It has been classified as critical due to the critical nature of the issue. Vulnerable code exists in the file drivers/net/wireless/broadcom/bcm4329/ Of all the components tested, the Linux Kernel is considered to be the most vulnerable. The issue has been assigned the ID VDB-211934. It was discovered by Hannes Frederic SUEß from the Google team.

What is Spectre Vulnerability?

Spectre is a vulnerability that is found in Intel and AMD processors. This vulnerability affects all modern x86-64 chips and requires software patches to fix it. The vulnerability is not related to Meltdown or L1 Terminal Fault (L1TF). Meltdown was discovered by the Google team two weeks before Spectre was discovered. L1TF was identified in November 2018 when the first reports of the security issue started to come out.
Vulnerable code exists in the file drivers/net/wireless/broadcom/bcm4329/ Of all the components tested, the Linux Kernel is considered to be the most vulnerable. The issue has been assigned the ID VDB-211934.
The flaw allows for a remote attacker to read memory content of their machine, but does not allow for an arbitrary write or execute operation thanks to speculative execution prevention techniques added through KASLR (Kernel Address Space Layout Randomization)

Spectre Vulnerability – Low-level Operating System bugs can be exploited

The researchers have found that low-level operating system bugs can be exploited to cause remote code executions on any machine running the Linux Kernel. This is due to the fact that these bugs exist throughout the kernel. As well as this, you are able to exploit this vulnerability without having to have access to the computer itself. The vulnerability is known under three names: ‘Spectre’, ‘Meltdown’, and ‘Variant 3a’.

How does Spectre affect the Linux Kernel?

Spectre is an attack that allows a malicious agent to read data from the memory of other processes and from the kernel. The vulnerability was discovered in Intel processors and later expanded to AMD, ARM and others. This vulnerability has been classified as critical due to the critical nature of the issue.

What is Spectre?

Spectre is a branch target injection vulnerability. The issue can be exploited to cause arbitrary code execution with speculative execution. It has been discovered that some processors have a flaw in the way they handle memory accesses. This flaw allows malicious code to take advantage of how the processor handles the program flow and actually change the data read from or written to certain locations in memory.

How Does Spectre Vulnerability Work?

Spectre is an L1 Terminal Fault vulnerability that can be triggered by a malicious process (or program) in a way that doesn’t require privileges, so it can be exploited without needing to run as root. It also has the ability to affect Intel and AMD chips. The vulnerability enables memory access to be abused due to speculative execution, and it was discovered by the Google team.

Timeline

Published on: 10/21/2022 11:15:00 UTC
Last modified on: 11/01/2022 23:15:00 UTC

References