WPI researchers discover vulnerabilities affecting billions of computer chips

Eurekalert  November 12, 2019 Researchers at Worcester Polytechnic Institute discovered two vulnerabilities located in trusted platform modules, which are specialized, tamper-resistant chips that computer manufacturers have been deploying in nearly all laptops, smart phones, and tablets for the past 10 years. One of them was found in Intel’s TPM firmware, and another in  STMicroelectronics’ TPM. The vulnerabilities have been addressed. They would have allowed hackers to employ timing side-channel attacks to steal cryptographic keys that are supposed to remain safely inside the chips. The recovered keys could be used to compromise a computer’s operating system, forge digital signatures on documents, […]