VDE-2018-002

Critical vulnerabilities within several CPUs have been identified by security researchers. These hardware vulnerabilities allow programs to learn about the contents of a system's memory, using side-channel attacks. Potential attack vectors against these vulnerabilities have been published and dubbed Meltdown and Spectre. While programs are typically not permitted to read data from the OS kernel or from other programs, a malicious program can exploit Meltdown and Spectre to get hold of secrets stored in kernel memory or the memory of other programs executed on the same CPU. As a consequence, an exploit could allow attackers to get access to any sensitive data, including passwords or cryptographic keys.