New Interrupt Injection Attack Can Bypass Spectre v2 Defenses on Intel and AMD CPUs

A novel attack dubbed INTERRUPT INJECTION has been revealed to bypass existing Spectre v2 defenses in Intel and AMD CPUs. This technique allows an unprivileged Linux program to manipulate hardware interrupts during the time window between branch predictor sanitization and its reuse, enabling potential data leaks such as reading sensitive files like /etc/shadow. The method was successfully demonstrated on AMD Zen 2 processors running Linux 6.14 with all default Spectre v2 mitigations enabled. Researchers from MIT CSAIL disclosed the vulnerability to AMD and Intel in February 2026, prompting AMD to release a kernel-level fix. While a patch exists within the Linux kernel, it lacks a CVE identifier or specific version reference, requiring administrators to verify individual systems for the fix. Intel claims mitigation is unnecessary at this stage.