Memory Safety Is Key to Preventing Hardware Hacks

The report reviews how Spectre and Meltdown exposed memory as an attack surface and summarizes industry responses to memory-safety risks, including Microsoft’s shift of system firmware and hardware-management code to Rust, the mandatory inclusion of the Pluton security chip in new AI PCs, and the CHERI Alliance’s effort to create memory-safe hardware architectures; it also highlights persistent challenges like developer inertia, side-channel attacks, and GPU memory risks.