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Oracle insists it really is going to sell computers powered by Sparc M7 processors – the same chips it started talking about in 2014.
On Monday, Big Red breathlessly unveiled hardware powered by the beefy microprocessor, and on Tuesday, its supremo Larry Ellison lauded the 64-bit CPU's security defenses.
One of these defenses certainly caught our eye: the ability to tag regions of memory so software hijacked by hackers cannot read or write data it isn't supposed to. This should, we're told, render vulnerabilities such as Heartbleed useless to attackers – more on that in a moment.
[...] The M7 has a defense mechanism called Silicon Secured Memory (SSM) which seems incredibly similar to Oracle's Application Data Integrity (ADI) technology.
ADI works like this: when an application requests some new memory to use via malloc(), the operating system tags the block of memory with a version number, and gives the app a pointer to that memory. The pointer also contains the version number, which is stashed in the top four bits. (A 64-bit pointer doesn't use all 64 bits: the most significant bits are usually all 1s or 0s, and can be used to store metadata.)
Whenever a pointer is used to access a block of memory, the pointer's version number must match the memory block's version number, or an exception will be triggered. The version numbers are checked in real-time by the processor with a tiny overhead – an extra one percent of execution time, according to Oracle's benchmarks.
(Score: 1, Funny) by wonkey_monkey on Friday October 30 2015, @12:06AM
Larry thinks...
Larry King? Larry Olivier? Chuck and Larry? Estelle Getty?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by Kilo110 on Friday October 30 2015, @12:13AM
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Ellison [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by subs on Friday October 30 2015, @12:23AM
You win the clueless commenter award of the hour for commenting without even having RTFS.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 30 2015, @12:40AM
The second sentence in TFS gives his surname.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 30 2015, @01:28AM
the fact his sig has systemd commentary in it leadsme to believe that wonky monkey is truly wonky or a poseur. I cannot fathom how one in IT today can not know who leads Oracle -- it's like not knowing who was in charge of Microsoft ever in the past decade or two.
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Friday October 30 2015, @08:35AM
I was having a dig at the presumptive headline.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 30 2015, @09:41AM
...the fact his sig has systemd commentary in it...
Don't take this jab personally, wonkey_monkey: The oppressive boots of the RedHat Revolution are always ready to crush dissenters.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 30 2015, @02:54AM
Mo and Curly's odds of cracking the encryption are less than 1-in-16.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Friday October 30 2015, @04:04AM
I would moderate your flamebait away... but for some reason moderation no longer works for me. It just hangs at the top telling it me it's moderating, but never does it.
My kingdom for *working* mod points ;)
(Although you need a +5 Woosh on this one)
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by captain normal on Friday October 30 2015, @05:12AM
How come we don't have a "Woosh" mod?
When life isn't going right, go left.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 30 2015, @08:53AM
Laffer?
(Score: 2) by Bot on Friday October 30 2015, @10:05AM
Leisure suit Larry.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 1) by massa on Friday October 30 2015, @11:31AM
You *do* know that they are one and the same, don't you? :D
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 30 2015, @12:17PM
His full name is Larry Thinks Oracle. It's right in the title! ;-)