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Intel 'Downfall': Severe flaw in billions of CPUs leaks passwords and much more (www.pcworld.com)

submitted 10 months ago by theunmentionable@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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[-] cybervseas@lemmy.world 203 points 10 months ago

Intel claims most consumer software shouldn’t see much impact, outside of image and video editing workloads..

But that's, like the one place other than games where consumers are looking for performance. What's left, web browsing and MS Office?

[-] FaceDeer@kbin.social 55 points 10 months ago

I just skimmed through the article and it seems like this vulnerability is only really meaningful on multi-user systems. It allows one user to access memory dedicated to other users, letting them read stuff they shouldn't. I would expect that most consumer gaming computers are single-user machines, or only have user accounts for trusted family members and whatnot, so if this mitigation causes too much of a performance hit I expect it won't be a big risk to turn it off for those particular computers.

[-] TheOctonaut@mander.xyz 83 points 10 months ago

Would it mean that a malicious application being run in non-admin mode by one user could see data/memory in use by an admin user?

[-] OverambitiousNewbie@sh.itjust.works 82 points 10 months ago

It would indeed imply that which is why this vulnerability is also serious for single user contexts.

The vulnerability is caused by memory optimization features in Intel processors that unintentionally reveal internal hardware registers to software. This allows untrusted software to access data stored by other programs, which should not normally be accessible.

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this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2023

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