Chromium-based browsers, such as Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome, will soon support the Intel CET security feature to prevent a wide range of vulnerabilities.
Intel’s Control-flow Enforcement (CET) technology is a hardware security feature initially introduced in 2016 and added to Intel’s 11th generation CPUs in 2020.
The CET feature is designed to protect programs from Return Oriented Programming (ROP) and Jump Oriented Programming (JOP) attacks that modify the normal flow of an application so that an attacker’s malicious code is executed.
“JOP or ROP attacks can be particularly difficult to detect or prevent because the attacker uses existing code running in executable memory in a creative way to alter the program’s behavior,” explains Baiju V Patel of Microsoft.
These vulnerabilities include attacks that bypass the browser sandbox or perform remote code execution when visiting websites.
Intel CET is a hardware-based solution that blocks these attempts, throwing exceptions when the natural flow is modified.
Chromium browsers with Intel CET support
Windows 10 supports Intel CET through an implementation called hardware imposed stack protection.
In order for Windows applications to support this feature, they must first be compiled with the / CETCOMPAT linker flag in Visual Studio. When compiled with this flag, a program will be marked as compatible with CET Shadow Stack and included in security protection.
This week, Microsoft Edge vulnerability research leader Johnathan Norman tweeted that Microsoft Edge 90 would support the Intel CET feature in non-rendering processes.
Edge 90 (Canary) now supports Intel’s non-CET renderer processes. If you have a sophisticated new processor, give it a try.
– Johnathan Norman (@spoofyroot) February 11, 2021
Microsoft Edge, which is based on Chromium, uses several processes to perform various tasks.
Based on Norman’s tweet, Intel CET will be used by non-rendering processes, such as the browser, GPU, utility, extension and plug-in processes.
Source: Google
This security feature does not appear to be specific to Microsoft Edge, but it is reaching all Chromium browsers, including Google Chrome, Brave and Opera.
Mozilla is also looking to add support for Intel CET in Firefox, but there has been no recent status update for its implementation.
Windows 10 users running Intel 11th generation CPUs or AMD Zen 3 Ryzen CPUs, which also support CET, can use the Windows Task Manager to check whether a process uses the hardware security feature.
To do this, open the Task Manager, go to the Details tab, right-click on a column header and select ‘Select Colums. ‘
When the ‘Select columns’ dialog box opens, scroll to the bottom and check’Hardware imposed stack protection. ‘Once enabled, this column will show which processes support the Intel CET security feature.
BleepingComputer does not have devices that run 11th generation Intel CPUs to test this feature.
Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge 90 are due to be released on April 13, 2021.