Re:Intel Issues Updates to Protect Systems from Security Exp...
by elihu on Thursday January 04, 2018 @09:00PM
(#16075897)
I think that's almost but not quite exactly right.
Spectre variant 2 attacks vulnerable indirect jump code patterns that exist in the kernel (or some other process), but doesn't require running the attacker's code.
Spectre variant 1 allows you to infer the contents of memory in the same address space, so that's the one where you'd use eBPF to attack the kernel.
Meltdown (variant 3) if I understand correctly can infer memory contents of other address spaces without relying on any assumptions about the code running in the other address space.
Spectre variant 2 attacks vulnerable indirect jump code patterns that exist in the kernel (or some other process), but doesn't require running the attacker's code.
Spectre variant 1 allows you to infer the contents of memory in the same address space, so that's the one where you'd use eBPF to attack the kernel.
Meltdown (variant 3) if I understand correctly can infer memory contents of other address spaces without relying on any assumptions about the code running in the other address space.
https://security.googleblog.com/2018/01/more-details-about-m...