Spectre and Meltdown variant 4: Microsoft, Google and Intel reveal new Speculative Store Bypass chip vulnerability

Just when you thought you could forget about the Spectre and Meltdown chip vulnerabilities, yet another variant has been discovered. Known as Speculative Store Bypass, the vulnerability affects chips from AMD and Intel, as well as Power 8, Power 9 and System z processors. The vulnerability has been assigned CVE-2018-3639, and successful exploitation would mean that an attacker could gain access to data. The attack can be carried out through a "language-based runtime environment" such as JavaScript. Some patches exist while others are in development, and they include the same performance hit associated with patches for the previous vulnerabilities. See… [Continue Reading]