8 ms·
OpenBSD chief de Raadt says no easy fix for new Intel CPU bug
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- snvzz 8y agoSo, it turns out Intel took every shortcut they could.
- 314 8y agoIt is interesting to see the same pattern that we've watched play out in financial markets repeated in such a different area. High performance from unstated changes in risk. Now that it has been exposed we know who has been swimming naked and over the next couple of years we will learn just how naked they were. Luckily I only run software that I trust on boxes where security is an issue.
- Y_Y 8y agoTheo de Raadt definitely swims naked. It's impressive that he's a security boss and a mountain-man.
- sebazzz 8y ago> Luckily I only run software that I trust on boxes where security is an issue. Does that mean you don't visit websites with scripting enabled?
- blattimwind 8y agoA web browser never had a place on an integrity-critical system.
- 314 8y agoIt does on boxes that matter. Is that really that unusual?
- imglorp 8y agoThe curious thing I'm learning about investors reacting to revealed disasters (caused by poor risk management) is, they don't seem to care as long as the long term story is there . A couple of examples: * The INTC bugs came out around the beginning of the year, but if you zoom out you can barely tell. It was 34 a year ago and it's 52 today. * FB fell around 6pct for the CA privacy news, to 152, and then a little for the EU hearings, but it's back in spades to over 200 now. As long as you provide a plausible hole in the sand, it seems the market will gladly stick its head there and ignore whatever us nerds are FUDDing about.
- shittyadmin 8y agoTo be fair, prior Intel issues were mitigated, and even if they couldn't be there might be limited reasons to think that prior issues will impact future sales without sufficient competition in the market. If it turns out that these older Intel chips can't be used for cloud computing anymore then it might just mean that cloud providers like Amazon take a hit but Intel makes a gain in selling them new chips. And Facebook privacy issues are frequently panic'd about briefly and then forgotten. Markets doing that pretty much mirrors the people who "delete facebook" every time there's a panic and then come back minutes later.
- daemin 8y agoAn Intel chip having a flaw will actually help sell more Intel chips in the future as people upgrade their computers and equipment to the "fixed versions".
- Nokinside 8y agoThey are different area but are they not the same strategy and manifestations of the common root cause. They are both variations of martingale strategy. Increase profits or market share in the short term by increasing the risk of massive losses in the long term. You can play the same game with financial risk and technical debt. People in Intel face pressure from shareholders to perform better relative to markets and from customers to beat the competition now. Financial industry has similar time horizons.
- Crontab 8y agoIndeed. As they are learning, there is no free lunch.
- alkonaut 8y agoIs the solution to this and previous side channel bugs to simply not run untrusted and trusted code on the same machine? Basically a revert to the security model of Windows XP. We should assume access to execute any code means the same security level as having physical access to a machine (I.e. full machine ownership)?
- zik 8y agoNo, as he points out in the article even a kernel call can change the virtual address space so even two threads of the same program may leak data. There's basically no known fix except to disable hyperthreading entirely.
- alkonaut 8y agoYes I meant more generally - effectively: at what point do we trust that there are no side channels in a modern cpu? It seems they are complex enough that the answer may be "never", at least for some high risk scenarios.
- DyslexicAtheist 8y ago> There's basically no known fix except to disable hyperthreading entirely. on kabylake & skylake this has been the recommendation anyway https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2017/06/msg00308.html https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2017/06/msg00308.html
- tambre 8y agoThat was the recommendation before the microcode fixes for the issue became widely available.
- pas 8y agoIf you pin VMs to different cores, never sharing hyperthreads, then the risk is contained per VM (or per core).
- 8y ago
- tempotemporary 8y agoWill it help to use VMs? Say something like Qubes OS?
- 4ad 8y agoNo, VMs will make things worse.
- pabloski 8y agoYou must pin them to specific cpu cores. But then you lose a big part of the convenience offered by VMs. It is like using gpu passthrough vs virtual 3d card.
- AstralStorm 8y agoNot that big part at all, you can change these settings at will. Sharing the CPUs (overcommiting) is probably out of the question though. Just most VM management UIs lack the functionality. GPU passthrough is special because they have weird initialization and shutdown handling. Plus are chunky (all our nothing) until SR-IOV variants become commonplace. CPU cores don't have these problems.
- pas 8y agoMaybe, if you pin VM's vCPUs to different cores. Then you can use the hyperthreads as vCPUs.
- mrec 8y agoCarmack said it best: "Putting anything that gets benchmarked in a position of security responsibility is very, very dangerous." https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/395927588108918785 https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/395927588108918785 I think the original context was WebGL, but it applies everywhere.
- blablabla123 8y agoThat's why WebGL is dead (apart copyright/patent issues, IIRC from Apple), there will be no new version. Instead an alternative standard is being development.
- MaxBarraclough 8y agoFirst I'm hearing of this. Got a link? Related reading: remember that time a bug in Firefox's WebGL let an attacker grab a screenshot of your whole monitor? https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2011/06/16/webgl-graphics-memory-stealing-issue/ https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2011/06/16/webgl-graphics-... , https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16457791 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16457791 , https://www.contextis.com/blog/webgl-a-new-dimension-for-browser-exploitation https://www.contextis.com/blog/webgl-a-new-dimension-for-bro... , https://www.contextis.com/blog/webgl-more-webgl-security-flaws https://www.contextis.com/blog/webgl-more-webgl-security-fla...
- mrec 8y agoNot GP, but I think the ossification of WebGL has little to do with security concerns and a lot to do with the fact that the GL model is a poor fit to the direction hardware has taken over the past couple of decades. Realistically, any successor is going to be benchmarked to within an inch of its life too, so the same worry would apply. The shape of that successor is still very vague, but it'll probably be closer to the Vulkan/Metal/DX12 generation. Various interested parties have been putting together exploratory proposals (see e.g. Mozilla's Obsidian), and Khronos appears to be accepting that "Vulkan everywhere" ain't going to happen and working on a "3D portability" initiative that's pretty much lowest-common-denominator. That would almost certainly have a web binding if it pans out. Disclaimer: I don't work in this area, I just follow it out of morbid curiosity. A few links: https://www.khronos.org/api/3dportability/ https://www.khronos.org/api/3dportability/ http://floooh.github.io/2016/08/13/webgl-next.html http://floooh.github.io/2016/08/13/webgl-next.html https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Mozilla-Obsidian-Graphics-API https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Mozilla-...
- AHTERIX5000 8y agoWell, Spectre was already an exploit without "an easy fix" but a lot of nasty workarounds.
- dooglius 8y agoI'll be curious to see the details of the exploit. The TLB should only hold metadata about the address spaces involved (e.g. virtual-to-physical mapping, how many times the entry has been used recently), whereas to extract a private key as claimed, one needs the side channel to have a dependency on the data.
- ksec 8y agoWhat is the current fastest In Order CPU with no SMT? My guess it is from ARM?