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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday January 02 2018, @02:29AM   Printer-friendly
from the starting-off-the-new-year-right dept.

Spotted over on HN:

The mysterious case of the Linux Page Table Isolation patches (archive)

tl;dr: there is presently an embargoed security bug impacting apparently all contemporary CPU architectures that implement virtual memory, requiring hardware changes to fully resolve. Urgent development of a software mitigation is being done in the open and recently landed in the Linux kernel, and a similar mitigation began appearing in NT kernels in November. In the worst case the software fix causes huge slowdowns in typical workloads. There are hints the attack impacts common virtualization environments including Amazon EC2 and Google Compute Engine, and additional hints the exact attack may involve a new variant of Rowhammer.

Turns out 2018 might be more interesting than first thought. So grab some popcorn and keep those systems patched!


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  • (Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday January 02 2018, @03:04PM (1 child)

    by RS3 (6367) on Tuesday January 02 2018, @03:04PM (#616724)

    So buy AMD stock now, right?

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by DannyB on Tuesday January 02 2018, @07:54PM

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 02 2018, @07:54PM (#616851) Journal

    Buy AMD processors now.

    Intel processors suffer from the vulnerability. If AMD processors do not, then I also observate . . .
    Intel is strongly associated with the Management Engine, a huge vulnerability disguised as a "feature".
    Gee, could this vulnerability be deliberate? A very deep obscure way to hack Linux and possibly other OSes?

    Paid for by Americans for Renewable Complaining and Sustainable Whining.

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    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.