Cloud Catastrophe: Hackers Score $150K for Busting Mitigations with L1TF Reloaded!
Researchers from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam pocketed $150K for their “L1TF Reloaded” exploit, combining L1TF and half-Spectre to breach cloud defenses and leak VM memory. The prankster-level hack bypasses security measures, proving that CPUs can be as mischievous as they are powerful. Who knew hacking could be this profitable?
Hot Take:
Look out, cloud nine! Researchers just made $150K by showing that your data is as secure as a screen door in a submarine. Turns out, the only thing more vulnerable than your high school diary is your virtual machine on a public cloud.
Key Points:
- Researchers from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam earned $150K for exploiting “L1TF Reloaded,” a flaw that bypasses cloud mitigations.
- The attack combines L1TF (Foreshadow) and half-Spectre vulnerabilities to leak VM memory.
- The exploit successfully leaked sensitive data from Google Cloud VMs, including Nginx TLS keys.
- Mitigations like SMT or EPT disabling and L1D flushing can reduce performance but are recommended.
- Google awarded the team $151,515, the highest Google Cloud VRP payout ever.
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