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posted by Fnord666 on Friday October 19 2018, @10:32PM   Printer-friendly
from the speculative-solution dept.

Researchers Claim to Find New Solution to Spectre, Meltdown

The researchers call their solution Dynamically Allocated Way Guard (DAWG) and revealed it in a recent paper. This name stands in opposition to Intel's Cache Allocation Technology (CAT) and is said to prevent attackers from accessing ostensibly secure information through exploiting flaws in the speculative execution process. Best of all, DAWG is said to require very few resources that CAT isn't already using and can be enabled with operating system changes instead of requiring the in-silicon fixes many thought were needed to address the flaws.

[...] Here's how the researchers summarized their approach with DAWG:

"Unlike existing mechanisms such as CAT, DAWG disallows hits across protection domains. This affects hit paths and cache coherence, and DAWG handles these issues with minimal modification to modern operating systems, while reducing the attack surface of operating systems to a small set of annotated sections where data moves across protection domains, or where domains are resized/reallocated. Only in these handful of routines, DAWG protection is relaxed, and other defensive mechanisms such as speculation fences are applied as needed."

Also at TechCrunch and Engadget.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @10:56PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @10:56PM (#751193)

    All hackers target businesses located in the South, racist sysadmins won't allow such an acronym on their networks.

    • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @11:13PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @11:13PM (#751198)

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deputy_Dawg [wikipedia.org]

      "The character of Deputy Dawg (a dog) is a deputy sheriff in the State of Florida"

      • (Score: 2) by Arik on Saturday October 20 2018, @03:25AM

        by Arik (4543) on Saturday October 20 2018, @03:25AM (#751257) Journal
        You better get me a lawyer dawg.
        --
        If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
  • (Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @11:17PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @11:17PM (#751199)

    They only announced their AI school yesterday and they're already smarter than Intel!

  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @11:33PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @11:33PM (#751204)

    MIT has been more about marketing than producing useful stuff for awhile now. They may even be the epicenter of the pseudoscience deluge we are currently experiencing.

  • (Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 20 2018, @12:23AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 20 2018, @12:23AM (#751221)

    "What speculative execution attack?" asked University of Riyadh professor Mohammed bin Mohamad. "The data entered the pipeline and then left out the back door. There was no execution."

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 20 2018, @02:12AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 20 2018, @02:12AM (#751245)

      What are these chopped off fingers, then?

      What? You want a toe, instead? You want a toe? I can get you a toe. I can get you one by 3 in the afternoon.

    • (Score: 1, Troll) by Bot on Saturday October 20 2018, @10:09AM

      by Bot (3902) on Saturday October 20 2018, @10:09AM (#751344) Journal

      yo dawg i herd you like jokes so i put a dawg in together with a cat so you can speculate while saudis execute.
      JK saudis did nothing wrong, apart selling oil.

      --
      Account abandoned.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 20 2018, @07:10AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 20 2018, @07:10AM (#751311)

    That proposal is only for "hits across protection domains", which means it only fixes those issues AMD was never affected by and that Intel already has fixes for on their newest silicon.
    It does absolutely nothing for all the other, far more tricky issues.
    And for the people commenting on games: I am pretty sure CAT only exists on Xeons, so it's of no use for ordinary desktop users.
    So overall I am not sure it is useful enough that anyone will actually bother to implement it...

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