"Surprise: A Small Change Leads to Big Results for Computer Security"

A team of researchers from UC San Diego and Purdue University has discovered a hidden feature of Intel processors that can enhance security, including shutting down an entire class of Spectre attacks capable of providing an attacker with sensitive information such as passwords or encryption keys. In their 2023 IEEE Security and Privacy paper titled "Half&Half: Demystifying Intel's Directional Branch Predictors for Fast, Secure Partitioned Execution," the researchers have completely reverse-engineered the conditional branch predictor for all of Intel's flagship processors. No prior work had fully deciphered these predictors, even those introduced over 12 years ago. The researchers successfully reverse-engineered the structure, sizes, and lookup functions of these predictors. This article continues to discuss computer scientists discovering, for the first time, that the popular Intel processor already has a key security feature that protects against attacks, including Spectre. 

UC San Diego reports "Surprise: A Small Change Leads to Big Results for Computer Security"