After security researchers were able to exploit design flaws in modern processors that lay undetected for up to 20 years, Intel said it would redesign future chips to correct those flaws, and on Thursday it provided a little more information about how that will work.
Starting with the Cascade Lake version of its Xeon server processors later this year, Intel will incorporate “protective walls” in its hardware that prevent malicious hackers from using speculative execution techniques to steal private information from the secure part of the processor. These fixes will also ship with the PC version of the Cascade Lake chips, but the tech industry has been much more concerned about the effect of these design flaws on server processors running in data centers and cloud vendors.
For a deeper look at the vulnerabilities that enabled the Spectre and Meltdown attacks, and the solutions that fix them, watchthe video below and then check out Tom Krazit’s well-documented story in GeekWire, and Intel’s article “Advancing Security at the Silicon Level”
