Tag: Ashish Venkat

Computer scientists discover new vulnerability affecting computers globally
Science & Technology

Computer scientists discover new vulnerability affecting computers globally

A team of computer science researchers has uncovered a line of attack that breaks all defenses and can affect computers globally, says ScienceDaily report. The new vulnerability breaks all Spectre defenses, meaning that billions of computers and other devices across the globe are just as vulnerable today as they were when Spectre was first announced. The researchers, led by Ashish Venkat, William Wulf Career Enhancement Assistant Professor of Computer Science at UVA Engineering, found a whole new way for hackers to exploit something called a "micro-op cache," which speeds up computing by storing simple commands and allowing the processor to fetch them quickly and early in the speculative execution process. Micro-op caches have been built into Intel computers manufactured since 201...