What is a Spectre or Meltdown class vulnerability and what makes them fundamentally different from software vulnerabilities?

Cybersecurity Fundamentals Hard

Cybersecurity Fundamentals — Hard

What is a Spectre or Meltdown class vulnerability and what makes them fundamentally different from software vulnerabilities?

Key points

  • Spectre and Meltdown exploit speculative execution
  • Mitigations involve changes in OS, firmware, and compilers
  • Performance overhead is a common consequence
  • These vulnerabilities leak sensitive data across security boundaries

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