Security News GPUs have a new 'job' -- combating malware attacks

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https://betanews.com/2018/07/26/gpus-have-a-new-job-combating-malware-attacks/

Intel executives have recently announced plans to redesign their processors at the silicon level in order to eliminate the notorious Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities.

However, the company’s current efforts to safeguard computer systems aren’t isolated to this initiative alone. The IT giant is also reportedly planning to implement technologies that will fight new malware threats at the hardware level. These include the Accelerated Memory Scanning and Advanced Platform Telemetry systems. Here’s a lowdown on these new promising technologies.

GPU will help detect viruses

The first solution -- Accelerated Memory Scanning -- will allow delegating the task of detecting memory-based attacks to an integrated GPU. This tends to be done at the expense of CPU productivity at this point, which deteriorates the overall system performance. The technique in question will dramatically reduce CPU load -- according to Intel, CPU utilization dropped from 20 percent down to 2 percent in their tests. As a result, the system will perform better and consume less power.

According to the company, when malicious code resides on the hard drive it can be obfuscated or simply encrypted. Theoretically, when it ends up in memory it becomes easier to detect.