From PC Mag: Bad news everyone: The majority of desktop, laptop, and server processors are vulnerable to a new type of attack called Hertzbleed(Opens in a new window) that's extremely hard to mitigate against.
Hertzbleed is a power side-channel attack and works by taking advantage of the dynamic frequency scaling of x86 processors. As Tom's Hardware explains(Opens in a new window), a program can run at different CPU frequencies when carrying out a computing task and the power signature varies accordingly. An attacker can capture the power information, convert it to timing data, and use that to steal cryptographic keys.
As the Hertzbleed research paper(Opens in a new window) (PDF) neatly summarizes, "Power side-channel attacks exploit data-dependent variations in a CPU's power consumption to leak secrets."
Hertzbleed impacts all 8th to 11th Generation Intel Core desktop and laptop processors, as well as several AMD desktop, mobile, and server processors, including Ryzen Zen 2 and Zen 3 desktop and laptop chips.
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