In early 2018, the disclosure of Spectre¹ and Meltdown² exposed the security risks inherent in speculative and out-of-order execution, which were hitherto considered harmless and valuable performance optimizations. In a nutshell, these attacks demonstrated that transient execution, where the computer executes code speculatively before reverting execution, leaves side effects on the microarchitecture, allowing adversaries to retrieve data across software- and hardware-enforced security boundaries.

中文翻译：

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Whack-a-Meltdown：微体系结构安全游戏[系统攻击和防御]

在2018年初，Spectre ¹和Meltdown ²的披露暴露了投机和无序执行固有的安全风险，这些风险迄今被认为是无害且有价值的性能优化。简而言之，这些攻击表明瞬态执行（即计算机在恢复执行之前以推测方式执行代码）对微体系结构产生了副作用，从而使对手可以跨软件和硬件实施的安全边界检索数据。