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March 21, 2023Severity Medium Analysis Summary Rhadamanthys is a type of malware known as a stealer, which is designed to steal sensitive information from infected computers. It was […]March 21, 2023Severity High Analysis Summary The Mirai botnet is a type of malware that infects Internet of Things (IoT) devices, such as routers, security cameras, and other […]March 21, 2023Severity High Analysis Summary LockBit ransomware takes as little as five minutes to deploy the encryption routine on target systems once it lands on the victim […]Threat Insights
Before Rewterz got its start, the market was in dire need of a specialized and dedicated information security company. It was nearly impossible for businesses to find a trustworthy provider that could truly cover all of their bases. We wanted to meet this need, giving companies across the globe a chance to get ahead while knowing that their data is in good hands.
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Platform
Managed Security Services
Managed Penetration Testing
Rewterz penetration testing services help organizations determine if a cyber attacker can gain access to their critical assets while giving them detailed insights of the overall business impact of a cyber attack.
Resources
March 21, 2023Severity Medium Analysis Summary Rhadamanthys is a type of malware known as a stealer, which is designed to steal sensitive information from infected computers. It was […]March 21, 2023Severity High Analysis Summary The Mirai botnet is a type of malware that infects Internet of Things (IoT) devices, such as routers, security cameras, and other […]March 21, 2023Severity High Analysis Summary LockBit ransomware takes as little as five minutes to deploy the encryption routine on target systems once it lands on the victim […]Threat Insights
Before Rewterz got its start, the market was in dire need of a specialized and dedicated information security company. It was nearly impossible for businesses to find a trustworthy provider that could truly cover all of their bases. We wanted to meet this need, giving companies across the globe a chance to get ahead while knowing that their data is in good hands.
Connect with Us
Rewterz Threat Advisory – Red Hat update for glibc
November 5, 2018Rewterz Threat Advisory – Microsoft Edge Web Browser zero-day exploit about to unleash
November 6, 2018
Intel CPUs are vulnerable to a timing attack that may steal information decryption keys from other processes running in the same CPU core with SMT/hyper-threading enabled.
IMPACT: CRITICAL
PUBLISH DATE: 05-11-2018
OVERVIEW
This is a flaw in the Intel processor execution engine sharing on SMT (e.g. Hyper-Threading) architectures. It can result in leakage of secret data in applications such as OpenSSL that has secret dependent control flow at any granularity level. Utilizing this attack, researchers were able to steal the private decryption key from an OpenSSL thread running in the same core as their exploit.
ANALYSIS
In Intel processors, an attacker can sniff out sensitive protected data, like passwords and cryptographic keys, from other processes running in the same CPU core with simultaneous multi-threading (SMT) feature enabled.
It’s a side-channel vulnerability residing in Intel’s Hyper-Threading technology, the company’s implementation of Simultaneous MultiThreading (SMT). This performance feature works by splitting up each physical core of a processor into virtual cores, known as threads, allowing multiple computing threads to be executed at the same time.
The problem is, since SMT runs two threads in two independent processes alongside each other in the same physical core to boost performance, it is highly possible for one process to detect with much accuracy what the other is doing.
Therefore, if an attacker succeeds in running a malicious PortSmash process alongside a selected victim process on the same CPU core, the PortSmash code will be able to snoop on the operations performed by the other process by precisely measuring the time taken for each operation.
AFFECTED PRODUCTS
The PortSmash timing attack is confirmed to work on Intel’s Kaby Lake and Skylake processors currently, while other SMT architectures including AMD’s are highly suspected to be vulnerable with some modifications to their code.
MITIGATION
The recommended mitigation technique for the PortSmash vulnerability is to disable SMT/Hyper-Threading in the CPU chip’s BIOS until Intel releases security patches. OpenSSL users can upgrade to OpenSSL 1.1.1 (or >= 1.1.0i).
If you think you’re the victim of a cyber-attack, immediately send an email to soc@rewterz.com for a quick response.