Intel Hyperthreading has dangerous flaw, claim

There is no statement as yet from Intel and from several other vendors likely to be affected. The security problem is one likely to affect servers rather than desktops.

The author of the report is recommending that admins take action to disable Hyperthreading immediately.

A FREEBSD man has claimed that hyperthreading, implemented in many Intel processors, has a serious security flaw.

Colin Percival, a member of FreeBSD's security team, claimed the flaw allows local information disclosure, meaning that unprivileged users can steal RSA private keys being used on the same machine.

Percival will present details of the claimed flaw at BSDCan2005 later today. He will release a paper describing the attack and possible ways to guard against it.

More information will be presented at this web page later.