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Meanwhile, "Red Hat slams into reverse on CPU fix for Spectre design blunder" [0]: > Red Hat is no longer providing microcode to address Spectre, variant 2, du
by jlgaddis 9y ago
Meanwhile, "Red Hat slams into reverse on CPU fix for Spectre design blunder" [0]:
> Red Hat is no longer providing microcode to address Spectre, variant 2, due to instabilities introduced that are causing customer systems to not boot.
[0]: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/18/red_hat_spectre_firmware_update_woes/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/18/red_hat_spectre_firm...
- Spivak 9y agoThis is really scary stuff for us. Their advice right now is to contact hardware vendors individually. We have hardware that's less than five years old that show no signs of ever getting patched.
- cookiecaper 9y agoYeah, Intel is caught with its pants down again, and clearly pushed out an unfinished microcode just so people couldn't say they hadn't published something, while quietly telling the Important People(tm) not to install it. I've blacklisted the microcode update from my systems for now. I understand this is being rushed out due to security issues, but the risk posed by complex local exploits like Spectre is substantially less than the risk posed by system lockups/reboots due to broken microcode. It appears that even ultra-conservative Red Hat is being forced into that conclusion. All of the mitigation stuff needs at least 4-6 more weeks in the oven before it's anything near production-ready, and in the case of Intel, probably more like 3-6 months before they have a semi-stable microcode, if ever. Disclaimer: I say this as an outside observer with no direct knowledge.