Apple: Fixing ZombieLoad Vulnerability Could Reduce Mac Performance by 40%

Apple has said that completely fixing the new ZombieLoad vulnerability in Intel processors could reduce performance by up to 40% in some cases. Of course, everything will depend on the specific processor and the scenario in which it is used, but in any case, this will be a pretty significant blow to system performance.

To begin with, we recall that recently it became known about another vulnerability found in many Intel processors. It is called ZombieLoad, although Intel itself prefers to use the more neutral name Microarchitectural Data Sampling (MDS) or Microarchitectural Data Sampling. We have already talked in some detail about the problem itself and available ways to solve it.

Now, Apple has published its own statement regarding MDS, because all of its Mac computers are built on Intel chips, and, accordingly, can be attacked. The company also offered a rather tough, but effective, according to her, way to protect your computer.

“Intel has identified vulnerabilities called microarchitectural data sampling (MDS) that affect desktops and laptops with Intel processors, including all modern Macs.

At the time of this writing, there are no known exploits affecting our customers. However, users who believe that their computer is at increased risk of attack can use the Terminal application to enable the extra CPU instruction and disable Hyper-Threading Technology on their own, which will provide complete protection against these security issues.

This option is available for macOS Mojave, High Sierra, and Sierra. But it can have a significant impact on the performance of your computer.

Testing conducted by Apple in May 2019 showed performance drops of up to 40%. Testing included multi-threaded workloads and public benchmarks. Performance tests were conducted using specific Mac computers. Actual results may vary by model, configuration, usage scenario and other factors."

Note that the company Intel stated that disabling Hyper-Threading is actually not necessary. You just need to use proven software. Actually, Apple also left the user with a choice, to protect themselves completely and reduce performance, or leave everything as it is. Intel also noted that it has already applied hardware "patches" against MDS in its eighth and ninth generation processors, as well as in the second generation Xeon-SP processors (Cascade Lake), so users of these chips should not worry about a new vulnerability.

But in general, it turns out that in order to provide full protection against ZombieLoad, you must either update the system configuration and use a more recent processor in it, or disable Hyper-Threading, thereby significantly reducing system performance. Although the latter will not protect against other threats that use speculative command execution. There is, however, another option - to use the system on an AMD processor. But in the case of Apple computers, this is not possible.

Source: 3dnews.ru