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The Memory Sinkhole - Unleashing An X86 Design Flaw Allowing Universal Privilege Escalation

Black Hat · talk · Watch on YouTube

Security & hackingComputer architecture & CPUs

What it is

Christopher Domas's Black Hat 2015 talk on a long-unnoticed x86 design flaw that lets an attacker reach System Management Mode, a ring below the OS. It explains how the legacy architecture allows universal privilege escalation and persistent, hard-to-detect malware.

Why Hacker News recommends it

Cited in discussions of CPU hidden features, Intel's security failures and SMM malware as a concrete example of a forgotten processor feature being exploited.

  • 1 people recommended it
  • 1 different months
  • 0 strong recommendations
  • first 2017, last 2022

What HN commenters said

  1. “was used in this fantastic piece”

    Fantastic piece on hidden CPU instructions.

    sabas123, 2022-07 · Recommendation · in “Intel Microcode Decryptor”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: x86, smm, privilege escalation, black hat, firmware security, ring -2

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