"New SWAPGS Side-Channel Attack Bypasses Spectre and Meltdown Defenses"

Researchers from the security firm, Bitdefender, have demonstrated a new side-channel attack similar to that of Spectre and Meltdown, called SWAPGS. The attacks could be performed through the abuse of modern CPUs' speculative execution capabilities, which allow the high-performance microprocessors to predict future instructions. Hackers can use SWAPGS to gain access to passwords, encryption keys, and other sensitive data in the operating system kernel memory. According to researchers the SWAPGS side-channel attack can circumvent mitigations implemented for Spectre and Meltdown. This article continues to discuss the impact and performance of the new SWAPGS side-channel attack, as well as the bypassing of existing mitigations by this attack. 

Threatpost reports "New SWAPGS Side-Channel Attack Bypasses Spectre and Meltdown Defenses"