New Spectre-v2 BTR Attack Leaks Linux Memory Despite Existing Defenses

Sep 29, 2026 - 19:15
New Spectre-v2 BTR Attack Leaks Linux Memory Despite Existing Defenses
A group of academics from VUSec and Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna have disclosed details of a new Spectre CPU vulnerability variant that affects Just-In-Time (JIT) engines present in web browsers, language runtimes, and the operating system kernel, across multiple CPU vendors. The new Spectre-v2 variant has been codenamed Branch Target Reuse (BTR). "The key insight is that, while modern CPUs