Security News > 2024 > July > Latest Intel CPUs impacted by new Indirector side-channel attack
Modern Intel processors, including chips from the Raptor Lake and the Alder Lake generations are susceptible to a new type of a high-precision Branch Target Injection attack dubbed 'Indirector,' which could be used to steal sensitive information from the CPU. Indirector exploits flaws in Indirect Branch Predictor and Branch Target Buffer, two hardware components found in modern Intel CPUs, to manipulate speculative execution for data extraction.
The Indirect Branch Predictor is designed to predict the target addresses of indirect branches using historical execution information, while the Branch Target Buffer predicts the target addresses of direct branches using a set-associative cache structure.
Indirector works against Raptor Lake and Alder Lake Intel CPUs, the 12th and 13th generation of the chipmaker's 'Core' processors.
Intel was informed about the attack in February 2024 and has informed impacted hardware and software vendors.
The researchers propose two primary mitigations against the Indirector attack: more aggressive use of the Indirect Branch Predictor Barrier and bolstering the Branch Prediction Unit design by incorporating more complex tags, encryption, and randomization.
The researchers have also published proof-of-concept code and tools for their branch injection attacks on GitHub.