Hardware backdoors in some x86 CPUs
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Hardware backdoors in x86 CPUs, highly technical and novel.
The rosenbridge project reveals a hardware backdoor in VIA C3 x86 processors, where a small non-x86 core embedded alongside the main CPU allows ring 3 (userland) code to bypass all memory protections and read/write ring 0 (kernel) data. The backdoor is enabled by default on some systems, meaning any unprivileged process can escalate to kernel access without authentication. Unlike the Management Engine or Platform Security Processor, this deeply embedded core has access to the CPU's register file and execution pipeline, making it more privileged than any known coprocessor.
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