FLOP and SLAP side-channel attacks uncovered in Apple Silicon CPUs
Researchers uncover vulnerabilities in Apple Silicon CPUs that can enable web-based attacks
Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Ruhr University Bochum have uncovered two new vulnerabilities in Apple’s “Apple Silicon” processors, impacting both their A-series and M-series chips. These vulnerabilities could lead to web browser-based attacks on Apple Silicon devices, allowing attackers to steal sensitive information.
These new attacks are called “SLAP” and “FLOP”, with the former impacting Apple M2/A15 CPUs and newer and the latter impacting Apple M3/A17 processors and newer. With SLAP, researchers demonstrated real-world security risks with an end-to-end attack using the Safari browser. With FLOP, they were able to demonstrate vulnerabilities using both the Safari and Chrome web browsers.
(New Apple Side-Channel Attacks – from predictors.fail)
These side-channel attacks exploit speculative execution mechanisms and their faults, making these attack vectors similar to the infamous Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities.
As of now, Apple has not released any security updates to address these vulnerabilities. Researchers have suggested turning off JavaScript in Safari and Chrome as a potential mitigation. However, this fix will break many websites.
In a statement to Bleeping Computer, Apple has released the following statement;
We want to thank the researchers for their collaboration as this proof of concept advances our understanding of these types of threats. Based on our analysis, we do not believe this issue poses an immediate risk to our users.
– Apple
Currently, these attack vectors appear only to have been exploited by researchers. As such, users of Apple Silicon products are safe from these attacks. Regardless, it is only a matter of time before malicious actors exploit SLAP and FLOP. Apple needs to update their devices to mitigate these issues and do it quickly. Hopefully, these fixes will not have a performance penalty for Apple’s users.
You can join the discussion on Apple’s side-channel CPU vulnerabilities on the OC3D Forums.
