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Re:Reading privileged memory with a side-channel by oh-kumudo on Wednesday January 03, 2018 @06:00PM (#16066260)
> The infrastructure that runs Compute Engine and isolates customer workloads from each other is protected against known attacks. This also means that customer VMs are protected against known, infrastructure-based attacks from other malicious VMs.

Doesn't Google say that they are protected...?

Re:Reading privileged memory with a side-channel by thesandlord on Wednesday January 03, 2018 @06:34PM (#16066546)
This means that Customer A's VM cannot attack Customer B's VM.

However, if the OS inside the VM is unpatched, then code inside the VM can attack other code inside the VM. If for example you install some malware on your VM, it could use this attack.

(I am not a security expert, this is just my understanding and not a official Google statement)

Re:Reading privileged memory with a side-channel by oh-kumudo on Wednesday January 03, 2018 @06:38PM (#16066580)
Right. But it means that once the VM is fixed, assuming the customer does this, they are guarded from such attack right?
Re:Reading privileged memory with a side-channel by rurban on Wednesday January 03, 2018 @07:15PM (#16066788)
Not against Spectre, which can extract any memory via javascript or user applications. Eg your secret keys or passwords
Re:Reading privileged memory with a side-channel by oh-kumudo on Wednesday January 03, 2018 @07:45PM (#16066952)
Spectre is a much more serious bug I feel, but it requires the VM to run the malicious code snippet inside itself and with the right context, not from other guest VM, that is how I understand this. The kinda bug that would totally destroy cloud as a business is the one that other guest VM can read your memory...which doesn't seem like to be the case, for now...
Re:Reading privileged memory with a side-channel by rurban on Thursday January 04, 2018 @05:17AM (#16069202)
Spectre is mostly about JavaScript extracting keys and passwords from the browser process. Install their ChromeZero extension for a start.

Meltdown on the other hand can do everything. But only on Intel.