Advances in Engineering: an International Journal (ADEIJ)
AN INVESTIGATION OF THE IMPACT OF MELTDOWN ON OPERATING SYSTEMS
Arash Tabe1, Seyyed Keyvan Mousavi2, Kaveh Shaker3, Payam Hatamzadeh4
1Computer Engineering Student, Department of Computer,Tabriz University Campuses, Tabriz, Iran
2PhD Student, Department of Computer, Urmia Branch,Islamic Azad University, Urmia, Iran
3Computer Engineering Department, Mizan Higher Education Institute, Tabriz, Iran
4Faculty of Engineering, Department of Computer Engineering, University of Isfahan,Isfahan, Iran
ABSTRACT
Meltdown hole is a hardware vulnerability which affects Intel processors, IBM Power processors, and some other ARM based processors. Through this hole, a destructive process sets out to read memory even when the destructive process is not allowed to do so. Meltdown hole is run on a wide range of operating systems including IOS, Linux, MacOS, and Windows; in addition, it affects many service providers and cloud services. The security of operating systems should be provided using hardware and software factors in order to prevent the penetration of destructors. Operating system is entitled to manage and control hardware and run the applications. Software patches should be used in order to enhance the security of operating systems which should undergo updating operations. In operating systems, kernel completely controls the system and connects the applications to the processor, memory, and other hardware inside a system. Meltdown hole allows the attackers to access and read the contents of kernel memory. In this paper, the impact of meltdown hole on various processors and operating systems are investigated and the security solutions of hardware and software companies are compared so as to deal with the security issues of the processors.
KEYWORDS
Meltdown, destructor, operating system, kernel, security
Paper URL: https://airccse.com/adeij/papers/2118adeij02.pdf
