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A Flaw in Millions of Apple, AMD, and Qualcomm GPUs Could Expose AI Data

Patching every device affected by the LeftoverLocals vulnerability—which includes some iPhones, iPads, and Macs—may prove difficult.

As more companies ramp up development of artificial intelligence systems, they are increasingly turning to graphics processing unit (GPU) chips for the computing power they need to run large language models(LLMs) and to crunch data quickly at massive scale. In the six years since disclosure of the Spectre and Meltdown CPU processor vulnerabilities, chipmakers have invested significant energy into strengthening and refining memory protections, not just through firmware patches for existing chips, but by making physical improvements to how CPUs are designed. “If a user is running on the same local machine as malicious software, then the final contents of the GPU program scratchpad memory that is used for temporary storage of data during operation could be viewable by a bad actor,” AMD said of the Trail of Bits research.

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