Speculative execution seems to be the source of a lot of security flaws in many different CPUs. CPU manufacturers seem to be so focused on winning the performance race that security aware architecture design takes the backseat.
Also, it’s more and more clear that it’s a bad idea that websites can just execute arbitrary code. The JS APIs are way too powerful and complex nowadays. Maybe websites and apps should’ve stayed separate concepts instead of merging into “web apps”.
I also wonder if it’d be possible to design a CPU so vulnerabilities like these are fixable instead of just “mitigable”. Similar to how you can reprogram an FPGA. I have no clue how chip design works though, but please feel free to reply if you know more about this.
Being a Linux user I really like everything being ran in the browser. What if we just have more control of which JS APIs can be used? On a site by site bases. Which I assume can probably already be done with extensions.
Some browsers such as cromite disable JIT compilation and WebAssembly by default. Allowing you to opt-in to enable these features on a site by site bases.
JIT and WebAssembly have been the source of many high profile CVE in browser recently including the one mentioned in the post (well, this one is on Safari’s Chrome).
relevant research
Also, it’s more and more clear that it’s a bad idea that websites can just execute arbitrary code. The JS APIs are way too powerful and complex nowadays.
Javascript in general was a mistake, and always has been.
The web should’ve had Scheme or Python instead. Or better yet, we shouldn’t have given up so quickly on Java Web Start because then we could’ve had proper web applications with their own windows and native UIs and such.
Maybe websites and apps should’ve stayed separate concepts instead of merging into “web apps”.
Damn straight!
Take a look at ARM Morello and CHERI.
FYI
“ They also said they don’t know if browsers such as Firefox are affected because they weren’t tested in the research.”
Seems you should be fine if you follow the usual protocols though: don’t open suspicious links, check urls, that sort of thing. I expect a frantic phone call from my mother-in-law who has an iPhone 8 any minute now…
FLOP abuses the LVP in a way that allows the attacker to run functions with the wrong argument—for instance, a memory pointer rather than an integer.
is this a vulnerability in the software? So patching this won’t require disabling speculative execution?
Hardware. There’s a load value predictor that guesses the value of a load from memory
But-but I was told Apple’s security was the very best! That’s why they charge so much for everything they make, right? … Right?
We can laugh all we want but this issue was present on x86 hardware first
https://thehackernews.com/2024/10/new-research-reveals-spectre.html?m=1
