From Linus Torvalds <> Date Wed, 3 Jan 2018 15:51:35 -0800 Subject Re: Avoid speculative indirect calls in kernel On Wed, Jan 3, 2018 at 3:09 PM, Andi Kleen <[email protected]> wrote:
> This is a fix for Variant 2 in
> Any speculative indirect calls in the kernel can be tricked
> to execute any kernel code, which may allow side channel
> attacks that can leak arbitrary kernel data.
Why is this all done without any configuration options?
A *competent* CPU engineer would fix this by making sure speculation
doesn't happen across protection domains. Maybe even a L1 I$ that is
I think somebody inside of Intel needs to really take a long hard look
at their CPU's, and actually admit that they have issues instead of
writing PR blurbs that say that everything works as designed.
.. and that really means that all these mitigation patches should be
written with "not all CPU's are crap" in mind.
Or is Intel basically saying "we are committed to selling you shit
forever and ever, and never fixing anything"?
Because if that's the case, maybe we should start looking towards the
Please talk to management. Because I really see exactly two possibibilities:
- Intel never intends to fix anything
- these workarounds should have a way to disable them.
Which of the two is it?
ArrogantlyChemical on January 4th, 2018 at 11:12 UTC »
Well they did work as designed.
Their design was just bad.
JavierTheNormal on January 4th, 2018 at 10:34 UTC »
As bad as these attacks are, let's remember that most RAM vendors haven't fixed ROWHAMMER after all these years. The state of computer security is very poor.
Running untrusted code on your computer is unwise. That includes javascript.
TyroPyro on January 4th, 2018 at 10:16 UTC »
Here is the Intel press release he is referencing: https://newsroom.intel.com/news/intel-responds-to-security-research-findings/