8 New Spectre Vulnerabilities affects Intel Processor
A new wave of security issues is affecting Intel Processors. Known as Spectre Next Generation or Spectre NG a total of 8 new vulnerabilities are currently impacting Intel chips and ARM Processors.
Journalists at German computer magazine Heise reported this new flaw in Intel.
What is Spectre-NG? All that you need to know.
Out of the 8 Spectre Vulnerabilities, researchers have classified four out of eight as highly severe and the remaining four as a medium in the severity scale.
Spectre Vulnerabilities aims at exploiting companies offering cloud hosting and cloud services to gain access to data transfers and data.
This flaw allows criminals to steal the data that is currently being processed on the computer including personal photos, Emails, Password manager, instant messages and other confidential documents.
The new flaw is supposedly known to originate by the “same design problem” which resulted in the original Spectre Flaw.
A spokesperson at Intel clarified that “customer’s data and security of products is their topmost priority and an efficient team of researchers and chip makers is working in close collaboration to understand and deal with all associated issues reserving blocks of CVE (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposure) numbers.
Google Zero-Day has been discovered as one of the 8 Spectre Vulnerabilities; however the same remain unconfirmed by Google Spokesperson.
Spectre NG more dangerous than Spectre
As per researcher at Intel, the 8 Spectre Vulnerabilities are divided into a medium and high-risk category and are considered to be potentially riskier than the original Spectre version.
Newly discovered Flaws are potentially more harmful as they are capable of providing criminal access to a virtual machine and target host system efficiently. Additionally, it can also target the Virtual Machine of customers running on the same server and target data transmission on cloud services.
It is capable of affecting Intel Software Guard Extensions that are explicitly designed to protect sensitive information and encryption keys.
The new vulnerabilities have shown shreds of evidence of impact on ARM processors however effects on ADM remains unconfirmed.
Spectre-NG is a potential danger for both personal and corporate PC’s and researchers are warning users to keep their system up-to-date with all related updates being released.
The Spectre-NG vulnerabilities appear to be reals, and Intel is claiming to provide in-silicon fixes to be released this year that should reduce and even eliminate the impact of current patches.
Closing Words
Security professionals at Intel are emphasizing on chip manufacturers to fill up security gaps in a more holistic way at the chip level.
A group of security researchers at Intel is already working on its patches for Spectre-NG and is planning to work with other OS Manufacturers to release these patches in two sections with the first one to be released in May and the second one in August.
We will keep updating as more details come to light!!
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