Intel microprocessor generations 6 to 8 are affected by a new Spectre variant that is able to bypass their retpoline mitigation in the kernel to leak arbitrary data. An attacker with unprivileged user access can hijack return instructions to achieve arbitrary speculative code execution under certain microarchitecture-dependent conditions.

Improper input validation for some Intel(R) Processors may allow an authenticated user to potentially cause a denial of service via local access.

Processor optimization removal or modification of security-critical code for some Intel(R) Processors may allow an authenticated user to potentially enable information disclosure via local access.

Hardware debug modes and processor INIT setting that allow override of locks for some Intel(R) Processors in Intel(R) Boot Guard and Intel(R) TXT may allow an unauthenticated user to potentially enable escalation of privilege via physical access.

Improper access control in the BIOS authenticated code module for some Intel(R) Processors may allow a privileged user to potentially enable aescalation of privilege via local access.

Out-of-bounds write in the BIOS authenticated code module for some Intel(R) Processors may allow a privileged user to potentially enable aescalation of privilege via local access.

Non-transparent sharing of branch predictor within a context in some Intel(R) Processors may allow an authorized user to potentially enable information disclosure via local access.

Non-transparent sharing of branch predictor selectors between contexts in some Intel(R) Processors may allow an authorized user to potentially enable information disclosure via local access.

Improper input validation in the firmware for some Intel(R) Processors may allow an authenticated user to potentially enable an escalation of privilege via local access.

Improper initialization in the firmware for some Intel(R) Processors may allow a privileged user to potentially enable escalation of privilege via physical access.