Re: [Xen-devel] HT Vulnerability CAN-2005-0109

[David Hopwood <david.nospam.hopwood@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Mark Williamson wrote:
> > Just stumbled on /. upon CAN-2005-0109 and wonder if xen is affected:
> >
> >  <http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CAN-2005-0109>
> >  <http://www.daemonology.net/hyperthreading-considered-harmful/>
> This vulnerability could (in principle) affect isolation between Xen VMs.  
> It's not clear how exploitable it is, though.
It's clear that it is very exploitable.

> Covert channels will *always* be there.
Yes. As you say, the problem is the side channel attack, not the covert
channel.

> Someone has yet to release code that'll actually exploit these theoretical 
> holes, so it's not clear how big a problem is in practice.
Huh? That sounds like something I would expect to hear from a Microsoft
marketroid. The paper includes code for the side channel attack (Figure 1
in <http://www.daemonology.net/papers/htt.pdf>), and even if it didn't, it
would be easy to replicate.

--
David Hopwood <david.nospam.hopwood@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>


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