4 ms·
Having a mode switch isn't enough; potentially any part of the program could contain a spectre gadget, so you'd need to run the whole program in that mode. A p
by bdonlan 7y ago
Having a mode switch isn't enough; potentially any part of the program could contain a spectre gadget, so you'd need to run the whole program in that mode.
A perhaps better approach would be to ensure that speculation aborts actually do clean up the entire microarchitectural state - ensuring that the cache state (and other persistent state) isn't affected by aborted predicted execution.
- kazinator 7y agoAlso, good luck working the aforementioned mode switch into every darn programming language, and finding all the places in existing code bases where it has to be applied, and then doing the work.
- a1369209993 7y agoSpecifically, the question is whether the current process (user or kernel) has mapped anywhere in its address space data the attacker[0] should not be able to access. 0: ie, there exists a entity (other than the end user) that should not have access.