ZombieLand came again in a new variant and its TPM-FAIL vulnerabilities caused a huge risk

A new variant of ZombieLoad that exploits the Transactional Synchronization Extensions (TSX) Asynchronous Abort operation in Intel processors for both older as well as recent processors including Cascade Lake architecture, was recently reported by a group of university researchers. The said researchers were said to have helped find Spectre and Meltdown flaws. This flaw is also called CVE-2019-11135. There are two flaws, CVE-2019-11090 that affects Intel fTPM andCVE-2019-16863 that affects STMicroelectronics TPM chip namely, and together they are called as TPM-Fail vulnerabilities.

It allows attackers to retrieve cryptographic keys protected inside Trusted Platform Module (TPM) chips which are part of many modern processors. The research team has also published a proof-of-concept exploit on Github. The affected chips are deployed in billions of devices including desktops, laptops, smartphones, servers, and Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices.

Using this vulnerability, local attackers or malware running on a vulnerable machine can snoop on processor cores and steal sensitive data from the operating system kernel. An attacker with access to the system can lift passwords, keys, and more from other running software.

The TPM-Fail vulnerabilities, on the other side, can be exploited by an adversary to leverage a timing-based side-channel attack to recover cryptographic keys.