Ankura CTIX FLASH Update - April 16, 2024

Ransomware/Malware Activity

New Spectre v2 Attack Demonstrated by Researchers

Researchers at the VUSec group from VU Amsterdam have released details of a new Spectre v2 exploit that can impact Linux systems running modern Intel processors via a speculative execution side-channel flaw. The original Spectre attack was disclosed in 2018 and was one of the original attack vectors discovered that involve microarchitectural timing side-channels which exploit speculative execution CPU vulnerabilities. Speculative execution is a performance-enhancing technique modern processors employ to start implementing instructions prior to their actual receipt in the effort to increase processing speed. However, this technique poses a risk by leaving traces of data in CPU caches, which could potentially be accessed by attackers. The attack methods demonstrated by researchers include Branch Target Injection (BTI) and Branch History Injection (BHI). The new Spectre V2 exploit has been