Neha Kochar, senior engineering manager at Mozilla, says that as a result of these protections, Firefox would not be vulnerable to the proof-of-concept exploit Google researchers developed for Chrome. Other browser makers like Mozilla have been working on Spectre defenses as well over the last few years. Google's proof-of-concept against its own Chrome browser not only illustrates feasibility, but also hints at strategies for both browsers and web developers to guard more comprehensively against such attacks. In the years since the initial Spectre and Meltdown revelations, that specific type of attack has never been seen in the wild, and it was unclear how practical the method would be. Such hacks could even be used to impersonate a target to pull down more of their data from web apps they're logged into. A Spectre browser hack would essentially launch an attack from one web page a victim is visiting to grab data from other pages they have open. That includes browsers, which load data from web servers and then display the content on individual users' devices through a local feature called a rendering engine. Every program running on a computer executes its instructions and crunches its data through the computer's processor and memory, making all of that information potentially vulnerable to speculative execution attacks. Researchers have never doubted that Spectre could be exploited for browser-based hacks. But now researchers from Google have developed a proof-of-concept that shows the danger Spectre attacks pose to the browser-in hopes of motivating a new generation of defenses. While they affect an astronomical number of computing devices, the so-called speculative execution bugs are relatively difficult to exploit in practice. "We look forward to advancing this litigation on behalf of consumers and businesses that were left with slower and less secure computers due to the defects found in Intel's processors.It's been more than three years since researchers disclosed a pair of security vulnerabilities, known as Spectre and Meltdown, that revealed fundamental flaws in how most modern computer processors handle data to maximize efficiency. "We are pleased with the Court's decision, which found that the claims we allege show Intel 'took advantage of consumers' lack of knowledge such that the resulting unfairness was glaringly noticeable, flagrant, complete, and unmitigated,' said Christopher Seeger, an attorney with Seeger Weiss LLP, who is lead counsel for the plaintiffs, in an emailed statement. The likely off-ramp for Intel, in the absence of further procedural defenses, would be a settlement – a trial runs the risk of a significant damage award. The case isn't yet destined for trial as there are more procedural steps along that road.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |