The Register: Spectre haunts CPUs again: VMSCAPE vulnerability leaks cloud secrets

Sep 11, 2025

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Source URL: https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/11/vmscape_spectre_vulnerability/
Source: The Register
Title: Spectre haunts CPUs again: VMSCAPE vulnerability leaks cloud secrets

Feedly Summary: AMD Zen hardware and Intel Coffee Lake affected
If you thought the world was done with side-channel CPU attacks, think again. ETH Zurich has identified yet another Spectre-based transient execution vulnerability that affects AMD Zen CPUs and Intel Coffee Lake processors by breaking virtualization boundaries.…

AI Summary and Description: Yes

Summary: The identification of a new Spectre-based transient execution vulnerability affecting AMD Zen and Intel Coffee Lake CPUs highlights ongoing security concerns in hardware design. This revelation is particularly pertinent for infrastructure security professionals, as it underscores the necessity of robust defenses against hardware-level attacks that can circumvent virtualization protections.

Detailed Description: The ongoing battle against side-channel attacks has taken a new turn with ETH Zurich’s discovery of a vulnerability that compromises the security model of widely used CPU architectures. This development is critical for security professionals focusing on hardware and infrastructure security. Key aspects include:

– **Vulnerability Type**: The newly discovered vulnerability is based on the Spectre variant, a type of transient execution attack that exploits CPU design flaws to infer sensitive information across isolation boundaries.

– **Affected Hardware**: The vulnerability specifically affects AMD Zen processors and Intel Coffee Lake CPUs, which are prevalent in both consumer and enterprise environments.

– **Impact on Virtualization**: The ability to break virtualization boundaries poses a risk to cloud environments and other multi-tenant architectures, where security between different users can be compromised.

– **Need for Mitigation**: Professionals in security must evaluate existing defenses such as patching, isolation techniques, and monitoring for anomalies to shield against potential exploits that could arise from this vulnerability.

– **Broader Implications**: This vulnerability’s emergence emphasizes a persistent threat in hardware security, necessitating ongoing vigilance and updates to security protocols as new threats evolve.

In conclusion, this vulnerability serves as a reminder of the importance of hardware security measures and the need for continuous improvement in protection strategies against sophisticated attacks targeting CPU architectures.

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