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IBM Z series silicon (z architecture and it's predecessors s390,...) Is designed with multi tenancy in mind from the get go. Finding a way to escape virtualiza
by froh 5y ago
IBM Z series silicon (z architecture and it's predecessors s390,...) Is designed with multi tenancy in mind from the get go. Finding a way to escape virtualization let alone partitioning to access confidential competitor data was a no go.
And indeed to my understanding spectre, meltdown, rowhammer and similar attacks are not an issue there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z/Architecture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z/Architecture
I wonder when more features from the mainframe cross pollinate Intel amd arm CPU architectures.
- monocasa 5y agoZ Series is very much susceptible to meltdown, spectre, and rowhammer. IBM says that it should be fine because Spectre et al need to be running untrusted workloads to work, but they haven't updated their advisories since NetSpectre. : / A lot of the talk of mainframe levels of security is specious at best.
- froh 5y agoWow. Your right, for spectre patches were needed on system z. https://www.suse.com/de-de/support/kb/doc/?id=000019105 https://www.suse.com/de-de/support/kb/doc/?id=000019105 Meltdown didn't affect z nor amd.
- monocasa 5y agoSeries Z and POWER up to and including POWER9 are susceptible to meltdown as well. https://www.zdnet.com/article/meltdown-spectre-ibm-preps-firmware-and-os-fixes-for-vulnerable-power-cpus/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/meltdown-spectre-ibm-preps-fir...
- froh 5y agoOk. debian is even more explicit than suse above regarding "no meltdown on Z": https://wiki.debian.org/DebianSecurity/SpectreMeltdown#System_z_.28s390x.29 https://wiki.debian.org/DebianSecurity/SpectreMeltdown#Syste...
- classichasclass 5y agoBut, not 7400 G4 and earlier. https://tenfourfox.blogspot.com/2018/01/actual-field-testing-of-spectre-on.html https://tenfourfox.blogspot.com/2018/01/actual-field-testing...
- monocasa 5y agoWhich aren't POWER cores. POWER is an IBM trademark; the 7400 is a Motorola PowerPC core.
- classichasclass 5y agoA fair point, though early POWER cores probably aren't for the same reasons these aren't (can't speculate through indirect branches using SPRs), and IBM was involved in the development of both.