A critical vulnerability named “Branch Privilege Injection” (CVE-2024-45332) has been discovered in all modern Intel CPUs from the 9th generation onward, allowing attackers to leak sensitive memory data across privilege boundaries. Mitigations have been issued, but the flaw poses a potential risk for data leaks if exploited under specific conditions.
Affected: Intel CPUs (9th generation and later), Linux, Windows systems
Affected: Intel CPUs (9th generation and later), Linux, Windows systems
Keypoints
- The “Branch Privilege Injection” flaw affects all modern Intel CPUs from the 9th generation onward, including popular models like Alder Lake and Raptor Lake.
- This vulnerability exploits race conditions in branch predictor hardware components such as BTB and IBP, enabling privilege boundary violations.
- By manipulating branch prediction during privilege switches, attackers can induce speculative execution of malicious code to access protected memory areas.
- Researchers demonstrated that the flaw allows leaking sensitive data, like password hashes from ‘/etc/shadow’, with high accuracy and throughput.
- Intel has released microcode updates that reduce performance by approximately 2.7% to mitigate the vulnerability, alongside software patches with some performance impact.
- While primarily demonstrated on Linux, the flaw is hardware-based and potentially exploitable on Windows and other operating systems.
- Applying the latest firmware and software updates is strongly recommended, although the overall risk level remains low due to technical prerequisites for exploitation.