cpu
Breaking Bitlocker
It was only a matter of time before someone did this. Bitlocker is Microsoft’s technique for encrypting a desktop, laptop, or other MS Windows device. We encrypt the device to protect the ...
HALT! I am Reptar! Intel CPU Bug Panics Cloud Providers
IaaS Catch Fire: Google and Intel fuzz, find and fix a fabulous bug. Next up: More of the same ...
Linux X86 Assembly – How To Test Custom Shellcode Using a C Payload Tester
Overview In the last blog post in this series, we created a tool to make it easy to build our custom payloads and extract them. However, what if we want to test ...
Linux X86 Assembly – How to Make Our Hello World Usable as an Exploit Payload
Overview In the last two tutorials, we built a Hello World program in NASM and GAS for x86 assembly. While this can help us learn x86 assembly, it isn’t viable as a ...
Linux X86 Assembly – How to Build a Hello World Program in NASM
Overview A processor understands bytecode instructions specific to that architecture. We as humans use mnemonics to make building these instructions easier than remembering a bunch of binary codes. These mnemonics are known ...
A Hacker’s Tour of the X86 CPU Architecture
Overview The Intel x86 CPU architecture is one of the most prolific CPU architectures for desktops, laptops, and servers. While other architectures exist and are even taking some market share with mobile ...
BlindSide: Intel/AMD Speculation Bugs Under Microscope Again
Researchers have published frightening details on what they’re calling BlindSide, which relies on co-opting our old friend speculative execution ...
Bypassing KPTI Using the Speculative Behavior of the SWAPGS Instruction
Bitdefender senior researchers Dan Horea Luțaș and Andrei Vlad Luțaș recently uncovered a new speculative-execution vulnerability and demonstrated how it can be exploited via a side-channel style attack, dubbed SWAPGS Attack. The ...
Yet Another Meltdown – A Microarchitectural Fill Buffer Data Sampling Vulnerability (CVE-2018-12130)
More than one year ago, security researchers at Google Project Zero have disclosed a series of hardware vulnerabilities affecting Intel® x86 microprocessors. Leveraging a feature of modern processors called speculative execution, as ...
Scientists claim to have invented the unhackable processor
An intriguing paper published by researchers at the University of Michigan describes a new processor architecture capable of self-encryption that can fend off any hacks. A DARPA-supported project, the new chip design ...