Russian researchers unlock Intel processors for reverse engineering
Credit:
Wikipedia
A proof-of-concept published by Russian security vendor Positive Technologies comes with detailed instructions on how to unlock processors to gain access.
Hardware hacker and director of Canberra-based security training company InfoSect, Dr Silvio Cesare, says the research allows people to reverse engineer Intel processors to a level that hasn't been possible before.
"The research looks at a method to gain very deep introspection into Intel CPUs," Cesare said. It does this by exploiting a bug in the CPU that Intel has released an advisory on, and then unlocking the CPU to see the chip's internals through an interface known as JTAG. Developed by the Joint Testing Action Group, JTAG is a chip-level interface.
