- Joined
- January 24, 2025
- Messages
- 18
- Reaction score
- 1
- Points
- 3
- Thread Author
- #1
I’m about to share a piece of information that might be the most dangerous thing I’ve ever heard in my life, and I’m not exaggerating. I heard about something called Project Prometheus, but not from a specific person or a well-known conference. The information came from an unknown source, and I can’t say what it is or where it came from. But it was part of content that shouldn’t have been available, and it wasn’t even classified as a leak because there were no clear details. But the idea was enough to make anyone rethink everything they know about processors and hacking.
The idea is basically that there’s a layer in the processor deeper than what’s documented, which can control the order of instruction execution. But not in the traditional way, like speculative execution, no. This is something deeper, called Execution Causality Violation, where the temporal relationship between commands is broken. Simply put, the processor could behave as if it has seen something that hasn’t happened yet, or it could read a value before it’s even written.
The terrifying part is that those who exploited this concept managed to plant a digital trace — a cryptographic trace — inside the memory dump of a device that hadn’t even powered on yet. So, literally, when the device powered on for the first time, they found data that had been processed as if it came from the future, not from any actual process that had occurred.
The content mentioned that this concept relies on an internal capability within the processor to modify micro-op scheduling in a way that hasn’t been publicly documented or disclosed. The technology was developed in a very narrow scope as an internal project called Prometheus.
There was mention of a few people who knew about the project, like Andreas Rottmann and Joao Cardoso. It was said that Joao tried to create a proof-of-concept but couldn’t publish it publicly due to encryption laws and legal concerns. He said just one sentence: "You can inject a trace into a processor’s reality before its first instruction is even born."
The source didn’t have anything concrete, like code or tools, but the amount of information was enough to make anyone think that if this is true, we’re talking about a level of control over processors that breaks not just security, but logic itself. There’s no tool or system that can monitor an execution that hasn’t even happened yet because what happened is merely a possibility that the processor decided on before it actually occurred.
This isn’t information about a hack or exploit; it’s more like a technology that allows the system itself to write its own history before it even starts.
The idea is basically that there’s a layer in the processor deeper than what’s documented, which can control the order of instruction execution. But not in the traditional way, like speculative execution, no. This is something deeper, called Execution Causality Violation, where the temporal relationship between commands is broken. Simply put, the processor could behave as if it has seen something that hasn’t happened yet, or it could read a value before it’s even written.
The terrifying part is that those who exploited this concept managed to plant a digital trace — a cryptographic trace — inside the memory dump of a device that hadn’t even powered on yet. So, literally, when the device powered on for the first time, they found data that had been processed as if it came from the future, not from any actual process that had occurred.
The content mentioned that this concept relies on an internal capability within the processor to modify micro-op scheduling in a way that hasn’t been publicly documented or disclosed. The technology was developed in a very narrow scope as an internal project called Prometheus.
There was mention of a few people who knew about the project, like Andreas Rottmann and Joao Cardoso. It was said that Joao tried to create a proof-of-concept but couldn’t publish it publicly due to encryption laws and legal concerns. He said just one sentence: "You can inject a trace into a processor’s reality before its first instruction is even born."
The source didn’t have anything concrete, like code or tools, but the amount of information was enough to make anyone think that if this is true, we’re talking about a level of control over processors that breaks not just security, but logic itself. There’s no tool or system that can monitor an execution that hasn’t even happened yet because what happened is merely a possibility that the processor decided on before it actually occurred.
This isn’t information about a hack or exploit; it’s more like a technology that allows the system itself to write its own history before it even starts.
