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GhostWrite Vulnerability Affects RISC-V CPU, Mitigating Takes A ~77% Performance Hit
Security researchers with the CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security have disclosed GhostWrite, a new CPU vulnerability affecting a common RISC-V processor.
The GhostWrite vulnerability allows unprivileged attackers to read/write to any part of the computer's memory and to be able to control peripheral devices like network adapters. The RISC-V CPU where the GhostWrite vulnerability was discovered is the T-Head XuanTie C910, which is found in various bare metal cloud instances like the previously reviewed Scaleway EM RV1 to various Lichee devices from compute clusters to gaming consoles to laptops and various RISC-V single board computers. The researchers believe the only way to address the GhostWrite vulnerability is disabling the vector extension of the CPU and in turn negatively impacting the performance.
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