Specter V2 is causing a performance drop on Intel and AMD
In the computer world, new vulnerabilities, viruses, and any other malicious software appear every time. A few years ago, a vulnerability known as Specter caused the performance of microprocessors to be severely affected.
This seemed outdated, but recently, Intel discovered a new vulnerability that does the same thing as Specter and dubbed it Specter V2.
This vulnerability causes great problems for users since it causes the performance of the processors to drop considerably. However, even though the previous version only affected Intel and ARM processors, it has been known that this new one can also affect AMD.
What exactly is Specter V2?
Specter is a vulnerability that first appeared in 2018, it is a vulnerability that allows programs to access a memory space arbitrarily.
This side-channel vulnerability affects the performance of the computers it attacks. It achieves this thanks to the fact that it performs a large number of tasks at the same time, saturating the processor.
However, this is not the only thing this exploit does, it is also capable of exfiltrating the hashed passwords of the admin user. Which makes it quite dangerous software. At the time, Specter has already caused a lot of headaches for Intel and ARM.
This time it has returned with more force and the different manufacturers of processors seek to stop it. As reported, they are already working on a patch to mitigate this security problem.
A drop of up to 54% performance
According to the tests that have been carried out, it has been possible to detect that Specter V2 can cause a drop in performance of up to 54% in some processors. This is something that alerts manufacturers who are rushing to find a solution to this big problem.
Testing was done on some of the newer processors like the Intel Core i9-12900K or the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X. In the Intel processor, the highest loss is around 35%, with an average of 26.7%.
For its part, according to information from AMD processors, it was known that they can have a loss of up to 54% in some specific cases. While the average loss is around 22%, a little lower than Intel's, but still a significant loss.
A race to patch the problem
Both Intel and AMD are developing patches to correct this vulnerability. It was even known that Linux had already launched a patch to mitigate the problem, however, this has also affected the performance of the processors.
That is why Intel and AMD users are waiting for manufacturers to provide a solution.