'Kernel memory leaking' Intel processor design flaw forces Linux, Windows redesign

Discussion in 'other security issues & news' started by Minimalist, Jan 2, 2018.

  1. Minimalist

    Minimalist Registered Member

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    https://www.pcworld.com/article/325...-separate-lawsuits-over-spectre-meltdown.html
     
  2. Rasheed187

    Rasheed187 Registered Member

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  3. roger_m

    roger_m Registered Member

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    I haven't seen it posted before. I prefer InSpectre, but it's still nice tool.
     
  4. guest

    guest Guest

    FreeBSD Finally Gets Mitigated For Spectre & Meltdown
    February 17, 2018
    https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=FreeBSD-Spectre-Meltdown-Fix
     
  5. reasonablePrivacy

    reasonablePrivacy Registered Member

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    No. They just were not notified as early as Linux developers.
     
  6. WildByDesign

    WildByDesign Registered Member

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    Chrome will soon be taking full advantage of the underlying Windows 10 process mitigation to restrict branch redirection within the Chrome sandboxed processes.

    Link: https://chromium-review.googlesource.com/c/chromium/src/ /922797

     
  7. HempOil

    HempOil Registered Member

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    Any way to predict when this will be rolled out and in which version?
     
  8. WildByDesign

    WildByDesign Registered Member

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    I found some more good details over at the bug tracker.
    Link: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=808526

    Some really great details in the comments, including a response from MS security team in the last comment there.

    But anyway, it looks like they are targeting Chrome 65 for release. It is difficult to say whether it will make it or not, but that is what they are aiming for. At the moment, it is conflicting with an AppContainer related patch but will likely be merged once that conflict is taken care of.
     
  9. HempOil

    HempOil Registered Member

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    I found the following in the thread: "available only in Windows 10, version 1709 or later and only with the January 2018 Windows security updates and any applicable firmware updates from the OEM device manufacturer"

    Unfortunately for me with my Sandy Bridge-era hardware, I will not be able to take advantage of this promising sounding update. :'(
     
  10. WildByDesign

    WildByDesign Registered Member

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    @HempOil Yes, good point. You are right. Also from the same bug report:
    So it seems that for that specific process mitigation, the CPU/microcode/BIOS update is still required. Initially I was hoping that this mitigation would be beneficial still for users who did not have an update provided by their OEMs but unfortunately that is not the case.
     
  11. WildByDesign

    WildByDesign Registered Member

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    Intel Microcode Guidance has been updated today ( February 20, 2018 )
    Link: ht t ps://newsroom.intel.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/11/2018/02/microcode-update-guidance.pdf
     
  12. Minimalist

    Minimalist Registered Member

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    https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/02/21/amd_spectre_lawsuits/
     
  13. itman

    itman Registered Member

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    Why I believe older AMD Processors And Current Low Cost Ones, i.e. "A" Series, Are Not Vulnerable To Sprectre - Variant 2 Exploiting

    When the Spectre - variant 2 exploit was originally disclosed, I immediately thought this might be related to hyperthreading. I didn't initially research this but have now and here are my findings.

    First, the actual Sprectre - variant 2 write up from GitHub:
    https://github.com/marcan/speculation-bugs/blob/master/README.md

    The above leaves no doubt that disabling hyperthreading in the BIOS will mitigate Sprectre - variant 2.

    Next is a ref. to an article stating that AMD didn't employ its own version of hyperthreading called simultaneous multi threading i.e. SMT until the current Zen processor line was introduced: http://blog.logicalincrements.com/2017/10/what-is-hyper-threading-simultaneous-multithreading/ .

    This article explains that pre-Zen processors use clustered multi threading i.e. CMT. The main difference between hyperthreading/SMT and CMT being:
    https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-hyper-threading-absent-in-AMD-processors

    Finally, as noted in reply #913, AMD did speculative execution the secure way:
     
  14. whitestar_999

    whitestar_999 Registered Member

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    @itman ryzen 3 1200 & 2200G also don't have smt so does this mean they too are unaffected by spectre v2 as per your research.
     
  15. itman

    itman Registered Member

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    I answer this with the following excerpt:
    https://www.networkworld.com/articl...spectre-how-much-are-arm-and-amd-exposed.html

    Also refer to my reply #913 for further details on this.

    The issue that needs to be explored in detail is if AMD with the introduction of SMT in Ryzen 5+ line also adopted the use of branch prediction? At this point, I would say yes.
     
  16. WildByDesign

    WildByDesign Registered Member

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    A rather unexpected (weekend) update to the Microcode Revision Guidance (February 24th, 2018 ):
    Link: ht t ps://newsroom.intel.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/11/2018/02/microcode-update-guidance.pdf

    My older Haswell ULT i7 has finally reached production (again)...

    EDIT: Broadwell appears to have reached production status as well.

    Therefore OEM's will likely be trickling out more BIOS updates this week. Let's cross our fingers and hope for the best this time around. :D
     
    Last edited: Feb 25, 2018
  17. guest

    guest Guest

    more about SGX and the implications of the CPU vulnerabilities on it can be found in the following paper:

    SgxPectre Attacks: Leaking Enclave Secrets via Speculative Execution
    (February 26, 2018)
    https://arxiv.org/pdf/1802.09085.pdf
     
  18. WildByDesign

    WildByDesign Registered Member

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    I've finally received the final microcode/BIOS update from Dell (dated today) for my older Haswell ULT i7 and, according to SpecuCheck, is all good now.

    SpecuCheck.png

    Regarding registry keys located:

    Some of us who were previously experiencing reboots, performance degradation and general hardware errors, we were discussing two of the regkeys within that were set to 1 or 3 depending on the configuration. If you want everything back to normal, you can simply delete those two entries, reboot the machine, and all Intel BIOS related Spectre/Meldown mitigations will be in place once again.

    I am happy to report that I am no longer seeing those hardware errors in the event log which is great. But the performance degradation is still horrendous. There is a very good chance that I will simply revert these registry keys and go without Spectre mitigation because this perf is rather painful.
     
  19. klarm

    klarm Registered Member

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    we got * by intel and I will never forgive them for this.
    I would just liked that this happened 15 years ago. It would be a very different tune than.
    I hope they get distroyed in courts but In this day of age...
     
  20. emmjay

    emmjay Registered Member

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    Does the performance degradation happen when you run something specific or is it across the board?
    - And this is on W10, 1709, +/- 4yr old ultrabook?
     
  21. WildByDesign

    WildByDesign Registered Member

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    Across the board. It's the starting of apps like Thunderbird and Chromium. But even just app usage, such as opening new tabs within Chromium which are typically instantaneous. My i7 has always been instantaneous for just about anything because I am essentially OCD-like when it comes to performance tweaks and configurations.

    Yes, this is latest Windows 10 1709 (all patches) on 4 year old performance ultrabook. It's like a $400 processor or around there, $2000 roughly for the ultrabook itself. But now it is not a performance machine anymore.

    But the changing of one (or technically two) registry keys is the difference between a performance machine and an Intel Atom or something like that. It's brutal. And in this case I will most likely opt for performance over security since this Spectre attack is likely only targeted and extremely rare at this point in time. That may change later, of course.
     
  22. paulderdash

    paulderdash Registered Member

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    Thanks for the heads up.

    Presumably it will be the same when my ThinkPad Haswell gets a BIOS update. Will probably apply the BIOS update and reset the key values as discussed previously, to retain performance.
     
  23. emmjay

    emmjay Registered Member

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    @WildByDesign. Depressing! Opting for performance over security is sacrilege here, but times are a changing ... for users.
     
  24. Dragon1952

    Dragon1952 Registered Member

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    It sounds like instead of a 30% slowdown, it is more like a 3000% slowdown after the Bios Update.
     
  25. JRViejo

    JRViejo Super Moderator

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