News Plundervolt: New Attack Targets Intel's Overclocking Mechanisms

[Admin]

The new Plundervolt vulnerability attacks Intel's voltage and frequency overclocking mechanisms.

Plundervolt: New Attack Targets Intel's Overclocking Mechanisms : Read more

 

[hotaru251]

from what Intel says is one of the safest areas on its chip

i mean at this point intel's chips and safe is a joke <_<

microcode and BIOS updates today to mitigate the vulnerabilities, but we haven't yet learned if Plundervolt mitigations will have an impact on performance like we've seen with other patches. We do know that the mitigation involves deactivating voltage and frequency adjustments from within the operating system, meaning that capability is removed from software-based overclocking utilities. Yes, your software-based overclocking tools will likely not work after the patch.

how long until there is no point in gettign a K series chip when its crippled to base speeds?

also how would this effect boost? Doesnt that need to access voltage changing?

 

[ngneer]

This is merely a configuration issue. How would a fix preventing undervolting cause performance degradation?

 

[wexir]

i wonder if you could do something like that with amd cpus aswell, since ryzen master you can change overclock settings etc from windows too...

 

[Chung Leong]

i wonder if you could do something like that with amd cpus aswell, since ryzen master you can change overclock settings etc from windows too...

I'd imagine, given the vulnerability is due to a physical phenomenon. Hard to image a scenario though where you'd still need to obtain the encryption after gaining control of the hypervisor. The hypervisor could simply start the VM in debug mode then ask the CPU to decrypt any given memory area.

 

[hannibal]

These attacks get more clever all the time... soon They will use power cord and electricity usage to spy computers...
All that it start to seem to be. It definitely is not easy to develop cpus these days...

 

[Pat Flynn]

i wonder if you could do something like that with amd cpus aswell, since ryzen master you can change overclock settings etc from windows too...

Likely not at all as this attack goes after the Intel SGX. While AMD has a security 'chip' within its CPU's like the SGX, it's a whole different animal. It'd be like robbing a bank with the wrong blueprints.

 

[svan71]

These attacks get more clever all the time... soon They will use power cord and electricity usage to spy computers...
All that it start to seem to be. It definitely is not easy to develop cpus these days...

These days? the design is 11 years old gen 1 released Nov 2008.

 

[hannibal]

I don`t mean cpu design, but the way it is compromised...