Intel thinks software and DRAM can protect against SPOILER

Yesterday news broke about SPOILER, a new security vulnerability that affects Intel CPUs. Via this newly discovered security threat, cybercriminals may be able to perform Rowhammer attacks more efficiently, to steal data from a computer's memory.

Intel issued a response to The Register, claiming they expect that software-based updates and DRAM modules with mitigation against Rowhammer-style attacks will offer enough security until hardware protections can be deployed:

Intel received notice of this research, and we expect that software can be protected against such issues by employing side channel safe development practices. This includes avoiding control flows that are dependent on the data of interest. We likewise expect that DRAM modules mitigated against Rowhammer style attacks remain protected. Protecting our customers and their data continues to be a critical priority for us and we appreciate the efforts of the security community for their ongoing research.

It will be interesting to see how much of a performance impact these new security updates will cause.