The latest security information on Intel® products.
Branch Privilege Injection
Announcement ID:
2025-05-13-001
Issue:
Researchers from ETH Zurich have published a paper titled “Branch Privilege Injection: Compromising Spectre v2 Hardware Mitigations by Exploiting Branch Predictor Race Conditions.” Intel refers to this issue as “Indirect Branch Predictor Delayed Updates”. We appreciate the work done by ETH Zurich and their collaboration on coordinated public disclosure. Intel is strengthening its Spectre v2 hardware mitigations and recommends customers review INTEL-SA-01247 and contact their system manufacturer for the appropriate update.
For this microcode update, Intel’s performance tests conclude that standard benchmarks are within normal run-to-run variation. Customers curious about microbenchmarks should understand that they are artificial workloads. For example, they employ a sequence of back-to-back system calls to create a synthetic test case for latency measurements; such microbenchmarks do not reflect real world workloads.
If customer use cases or threat models did not consider Spectre v2 (transient execution) in the past, there is nothing new to consider now. To date, Intel is not aware of any real-world exploits of transient execution vulnerabilities.
Resolution/Recommendations:
Review INTEL-SA-01247 for more information.
Watch the Intel Chips & Salsa interview with the ETH Zurich research team: https://youtu.be/h3am8F3_sUU
Acknowledgements:
Intel would like to thank Sandro Rüegge, Johannes Wikner, and Kaveh Razavi, ETH Zurich, for reporting this issue.
Legal Notices and Disclaimers
Intel provides these materials as-is, with no express or implied warranties.
All products, dates, and figures specified are preliminary based on current expectations, and are subject to change without notice.
Intel products and services described may contain design defects or errors known as errata, which may cause the product to deviate from published specifications. Current characterized errata are available on request.
Intel products that have met their End of Servicing Updates may no longer receive functional and security updates. For additional details on support and servicing, please see this help article.
Intel technologies’ features and benefits depend on system configuration and may require enabled hardware, software or service activation. Performance varies depending on system configuration. No product or component can be absolutely secure. Check with your system manufacturer or retailer or learn more at http://intel.com.
Some results have been estimated or simulated using internal Intel analysis or architecture simulation or modeling, and provided to you for informational purposes. Any differences in your system hardware, software or configuration may affect your actual performance.
© Intel Corporation. Intel, the Intel logo, and other Intel marks are trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries United States and other countries. Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.
Report a Vulnerability
If you have information about a security issue or vulnerability with an Intel branded product or technology, please send an e-mail to secure@intel.com. Encrypt sensitive information using our PGP public key.
Please provide as much information as possible, including:
- The products and versions affected
- Detailed description of the vulnerability
- Information on known exploits
A member of the Intel Product Security Team will review your e-mail and contact you to collaborate on resolving the issue. For more information on how Intel works to resolve security issues, see:
For issues related to Intel's external web presence (Intel.com and related subdomains), please contact Intel's External Security Research team.
Need product support?
If you...
- Have questions about the security features of an Intel product
- Require technical support
- Want product updates or patches
Please visit Support & Downloads.