iTWire Monday, 03 May 2021 11:05 US researchers find flaw affecting processors made since 2011 Shares Ashish Venkat: "We show how an attacker can smuggle secrets through the micro-op cache by using it as a covert channel.” Supplied Researchers at the University of Virginia School of Engineering computer science department have discovered vulnerabilities earlier in the speculative execution chain of a processor than the Spectre flaw which was made public in January 2018. Spectre can trick vulnerable applications into leaking the contents of their memory. The UVA team found a way to exploit what is called a micro-op cache which speeds up computing by storing commands early in the speculative execution process. Micro-op caches are present in Intel processors produced since 2011.