As operating system developers redesign their kernel software and chipmakers release patches, you might be wondering how secure microcontrollers are affected by the Meltdown and Spectre chip vulnerabilities. After all, you rely on these ICs to protect your designs from side-channel attacks, reverse engineering, physical tampering, and the like. If you're designing with Maxim DeepCover secure microcontrollers, you can rest assured. Based on Arm Cortex-M and ARM926 processors, these secure microcontrollers are unaffected by these chip flaws. So are Maxim's USIP PRO secure microcontrollers based on MIPS processors and the company's MAXQ family of RISC microcontrollers.
The Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities potentially expose critical information--such as passwords, proprietary data, and encrypted communications--stored deep inside computer and embedded systems. Both flaws tap into a vulnerability in the process of speculative execution, which computers utilize to determine their next course of action when encountering a test. This process accelerates computer processing time, as the computer speculatively executes the code that it deems most likely to run when confronted with a conditional test. However, attackers have found a way inside the speculative window and, thus, a way to manipulate the system.
For more details on how Maxim's secure microcontrollers have remained safe from Meltdown and Spectre, read "Secure Microcontrollers Safe from Spectre and Meltdown Flaws" by two of the company's security experts, Yann Loisel and Stephane Di Vito.
The Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities potentially expose critical information--such as passwords, proprietary data, and encrypted communications--stored deep inside computer and embedded systems. Both flaws tap into a vulnerability in the process of speculative execution, which computers utilize to determine their next course of action when encountering a test. This process accelerates computer processing time, as the computer speculatively executes the code that it deems most likely to run when confronted with a conditional test. However, attackers have found a way inside the speculative window and, thus, a way to manipulate the system.
For more details on how Maxim's secure microcontrollers have remained safe from Meltdown and Spectre, read "Secure Microcontrollers Safe from Spectre and Meltdown Flaws" by two of the company's security experts, Yann Loisel and Stephane Di Vito.