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DEF CON 26 - Christopher Domas - The Ring 0 Facade Awakening the Processors Inner Demons

DEFCONConference · talk · Watch on YouTube

Security & hackingComputer architecture & CPUs

What it is

Christopher Domas's DEF CON 26 talk on secret processor registers that vendors reserve for third parties holding trusted keys. He examines how users are locked out of parts of their own CPUs.

Why Hacker News recommends it

HN commenters call his x86 internals talks spectacular and mention them whenever low-level processor surprises come up.

  • 2 people recommended it
  • 2 different months
  • 2 strong recommendations
  • first 2019, last 2026

What HN commenters said

  1. “And yes, they are spectacular.”

    Spectacular talks on x86 processor internals.

    daniel-thompson, 2021-08 · Strong recommendation · in “Compiling C Programs Into “Mov” Instructions (And Only “Mov” Instructions)”

  2. “I remember watching his Defcon talks on x86 shenanigans[^1][^2] and being amazed at what he's been able to discover”

    Amazing x86 discoveries by Christopher Domas.

    aecsocket, 2026-08 · Strong recommendation · in “Spaghettifying DRAM”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: x86, hardware security, cpu registers, reverse engineering, def con

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