New speculative execution bug leaks data from Intel chips’ internal buffers

First disclosed in January 2018, the Meltdown and Spectre attacks have opened the floodgates, leading to extensive research into the speculative execution hardware found in modern processors, and a number of additional attacks have been published in the months since.

Today sees the publication of a range of closely related flaws named variously RIDL, Fallout, ZombieLoad, or Microarchitectural Data Sampling. The many names are a consequence of the several groups that discovered the different flaws. From the computer science department of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and Helmholtz Center for Information Security, we have "Rogue In-Flight Data Load." From a team spanning Graz University of Technology, the University of Michigan, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and KU Leuven, we have "Fallout." From Graz University of Technology, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and KU Leuven, we have "ZombieLoad," and from Graz University of Technology, we have "Store-to-Leak Forwarding."

Intel is using the name "Microarchitectural Data Sampling" (MDS), and that's the name that arguably gives the most insight into the problem. The issues were independently discovered by both Intel and the various other groups, with the first notification to the chip company occurring in June last year.