Downfall Vulnerability Affects Millions of Intel CPUs With Strong Data Leak Impact
11-Aug-23
Daniel Moghimi, a Google researcher, identified a fresh vulnerability impacting millions of Intel chip models. If successfully exploited, the flaw, named Downfall by Moghimi, allows an attacker to collect private information from victims. Intel offers mitigation for impacted gear, which covers computers with Intel Core processors from the sixth Skylake generation to the eleventh Tiger Lake generation.
CVE-2022-40982/Downfall is a hardware information disclosure issue of a medium severity, according to the Intel advisory. Moghimi claims that the processors made by Intel have a vulnerability in their memory optimization features. Successful exploitation allows applications to access internal hardware registers. Therefore, it should not be feasible for untrusted software to access data held by other program.
