While the Meltdown and Spectre CPU flaws have caused widespread security issues for expensive, high-end computers using Intel, ARM and AMD chips, there's one processor that remains blissfully unaffected - the humble Raspberry Pi.
The $35 microcomputer (as well as all of its variants) is not vulnerable to the recently discovered bugsbecause the CPU it uses does not utilise out-of-order processing, the Raspberry Pi Foundation revealed last Friday.
Meltdown and Spectre allow attackers to read data from locations in a chip system kernel's address space and current address space respectively, exploiting flaws in the way CPUs employ caching and speculative execution.
"Modern processors go to great lengths to preserve the abstraction that they are in-order scalar machines that access memory directly," Raspberry Pi founder Eben Upton explained in a blog post, "while in fact using a host of techniques including caching, instruction reordering, and speculation to deliver much higher performance than a simple processor could hope to achieve."
"Meltdown and Spectre are examples of what happens when we reason about security in the context of that abstraction, and then encounter minor discrepancies between the abstraction and reality. The lack of speculation in the ARM1176, Cortex-A7, and Cortex-A53 cores used in Raspberry Pi render us immune to attacks of the sort."
So while your top-of-the-range work device might be vulnerable to hackers, your garage Pi project remains happily safe from the threat.
Researchers have noted that while newer and more powerful machines are rendered vulnerable by this bug, older 'obsolete' machines remain secure. As an experiment, engineer and NUS School of Computing graduate Yeo Kheng Meng managed to get a modern Linux distro running on a 25-year-old IBM PC from 1993 - an x86 machine that isn't vulnerable to Meltdown or Spectre due to the fact that it doesn't support out-of-order processing.
-
Should AI PCs be part of your next hardware refresh?AI PCs are fast becoming a business staple and a surefire way to future-proof your business
-
Westcon-Comstor and Vectra AI launch brace of new channel initiativesNews Westcon-Comstor and Vectra AI have announced the launch of two new channel growth initiatives focused on the managed security service provider (MSSP) space and AWS Marketplace.
-
Hackers are targeting Ivanti VPN users again – here’s what you need to knowNews Ivanti has re-patched a security flaw in its Connect Secure VPN appliances that's been exploited by a China-linked espionage group since at least the middle of March.
-
Broadcom issues urgent alert over three VMware zero-daysNews The firm says it has information to suggest all three are being exploited in the wild
-
Nakivo backup flaw still present on some systems months after firms’ ‘silent patch’, researchers claimNews Over 200 vulnerable Nakivo backup instances have been identified months after the firm silently patched a security flaw.
-
Everything you need to know about the Microsoft Power Pages vulnerabilityNews A severe Microsoft Power Pages vulnerability has been fixed after cyber criminals were found to have been exploiting unpatched systems in the wild.
-
Vulnerability management complexity is leaving enterprises at serious riskNews Fragmented data and siloed processes mean remediation is taking too long
-
A critical Ivanti flaw is being exploited in the wild – here’s what you need to knowNews Cyber criminals are actively exploiting a critical RCE flaw affecting Ivanti Connect Secure appliances
-
Researchers claim an AMD security flaw could let hackers access encrypted dataNews Using only a $10 test rig, researchers were able to pull off the badRAM attack
-
GPU memory vulnerability could allow hackers to access LLM responses - and Apple, Qualcomm, and AMD products were all at riskNews The GPU memory vulnerability could've left large language models wide open to exploitation by threat actors
