Uncovered, Big Intel Processor Security Gap

Intel is a company's largest processor in the world. Before ARM came to power in the mobile market, more fully read "ARM, Smartphone market ruler"

By 2015 Intel holds 87.7% of the computer processor market worldwide. compared with its main competitor AMD which only control 12.1% (Mercury Research). Perhaps the readers of this article almost all use computers with Intel processors, including Apple Computer.

On January 2, 2018, The Register released a startling news. Intel processor turns out to have a large security hole. This is likely due to an error in the design process.

This security hole is in the kernel. Quote wikipedia The kernel is a computer program that is the basis of an operating system. the kernel controls thoroughly everything in the computer system.

Bug or error in the design of a computer system is present on all Intel processors manufactured the last 10 years. This bug causes everyone who has access to a computer system can look into the memory that should be protected.

meaning that if we run a program, the program should only be able to access the data we have allowed to see. But because of the bug, then the program can look to the data that should be protected.

analogy, we have a computer and allow others to borrow it. We have some data we already have passwords. But because the system is problematic, then the person we lend the computer can see the data that should be protected.

linux has started to create an application that can patch this vulnerability. The trick is to separate between kernel memory and user process. This program is called Forcefully Unmap Complete Kernel with Interrupt Trampoline (FuckWiT) .reflecting the frustration of the programmakers for Intel's design mistakes.

AMD in emails sent to Linux says that the processors they create do not have a security hole like Intel processors. aMD says that their design does not allow memory references including speculative references, which can access to data that should not be accessed.

The key word is speculative, modern processors like Intel do speculative references. the processor will try to guess what code will be run next, in order to increase speed.

Microsoft in an email to CNBC News said that this problem is a problem in all processor companies and Microsoft has worked with all industry players to overcome this. we are working to mitigate risk and start issuing security updates to close loopholes in Intel, ARM and AMD output processors

Intel said that they acknowledge that there is a security hole found and Intel also said that this problem is not just a problem on Intel processors but also occurs in AMD and ARM. AMD itself denied this as already mentioned above.

this security gap will be closed, but the problem is the program to close this security gap will be able to reduce performance up to 30%.

It remains to be proven whether it will be so bad. For computer users who can do is wait for Linux, Google and Microsoft to patch this vulnerability. And hope that the decline in performance is not as bad as expected.