Imagine that you have a secret diary where you write all your thoughts and feelings. Now, think of your computer as having a similar kind of secret diary inside it, called a CPU, where it stores all its temporary secrets while working. Just like you wouldn’t want anyone to read your diary, you don’t want anyone to see what your computer is secretly doing. But what if someone found a sneaky way to peek into your computer’s secret keeping place without you knowing?
A group of smart people from the University of California, San Diego, have recently discovered a new sneaky method to do just that. They call it “Indirector,” and it’s a way for someone to secretly steal information from the computer’s CPU. They figured out this method by studying a particular part of a CPU from Intel, a company that makes these little secret keepers for computers.
In computers, there’s something called “speculative execution.” Imagine if you started guessing what you were going to write next in your diary before you actually wrote it. Your computer’s CPU does something like that; it guesses what it will need to do next to save time. But this also gives sneaky attackers a chance to guess those secrets.
This new sneaky method can affect a lot of computers because it works on CPUs that are very common in many high-powered devices. What makes it even trickier is that it can find those secrets without being noticed easily.
So, what can we do about this? Well, protecting against this kind of attack isn’t easy. The smart people who found this problem told Intel, and Intel told other companies who make software and computers. They have some defenses in place, but these defenses could slow down the computer quite a bit. And nobody likes a slow computer.
It’s like deciding whether to put a big lock on your diary that makes it hard to open every time you want to write something new. Figuring out the best way to keep secrets safe without making it too hard to use is something everyone’s working on.
If you want to know more about this and get some help in keeping your own computer’s secrets safe, you might want to talk to the folks at Diversified Outlook Group. They’re pretty clever at understanding these issues and helping out. You can reach them at support@diversifiedoutlookgroup.com.
And if you’re curious and want to read more about the Indirector attack and what’s going on with computer CPUs, you can check out the detailed article here: www.csoonline.com/article/2514202/new-intel-cpu-side-channel-attack-indirector-can-leak-sensitive-data.html. Remember, it’s always good to be in the know about how to keep your secrets safe!
