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Intel Hyperthreading: Timing Attacks Expose Security Keys

May 17, 2005 •

Anthony Pell

1 min read

Topics Covered

security advisory vulnerability timing attack research security keys performance risk hyperthreading

Intel's hyperthreading technology could allow a hacker to steal security keys from a compromised server using a sophisticated timing attack, a researcher has warned. Hyperthreading allows software to take advantage of unused execution units in a processor. It essentially allows two separate processes, or software threads, to execute on a single processor at the same time, improving performance.

However, by taking advantage of the fact that the processes share access to a chip's cache memory, a malicious user can determine the security keys to a particular computer by monitoring the cache for those keys, said Colin Percival, an independent researcher, in a paper posted to his website and presented at the BSDCan 2005 conference.

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