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!
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday January 03 2018, @06:17AM
Suddenly, any performance advantage an Intel chip had over AMD just disappeared.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]