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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday April 04 2018, @08:46AM   Printer-friendly
from the defect-closed-will-not-fix dept.

It seems Intel has had some second thoughts about Spectre 2 microcode fixes:

Intel has issued new a new "microcode revision guidance" that confesses it won't address the Meltdown and Spectre design flaws in all of its vulnerable processors – in some cases because it's too tricky to remove the Spectre v2 class of vulnerabilities.

The new guidance (pdf), issued April 2, adds a "stopped" status to Intel's "production status" category in its array of available Meltdown and Spectre security updates. "Stopped" indicates there will be no microcode patch to kill off Meltdown and Spectre.

The guidance explains that a chipset earns "stopped" status because, "after a comprehensive investigation of the microarchitectures and microcode capabilities for these products, Intel has determined to not release microcode updates for these products for one or more reasons."

Those reasons are given as:

  • Micro-architectural characteristics that preclude a practical implementation of features mitigating [Spectre] Variant 2 (CVE-2017-5715)
  • Limited Commercially Available System Software support
  • Based on customer inputs, most of these products are implemented as "closed systems" and therefore are expected to have a lower likelihood of exposure to these vulnerabilities.

Thus, if a chip family falls under one of those categories – such as Intel can't easily fix Spectre v2 in the design, or customers don't think the hardware will be exploited – it gets a "stopped" sticker. To leverage the vulnerabilities, malware needs to be running on a system, so if the computer is totally closed off from the outside world, administrators may feel it's not worth the hassle applying messy microcode, operating system, or application updates.

"Stopped" CPUs that won't therefore get a fix are in the Bloomfield, Bloomfield Xeon, Clarksfield, Gulftown, Harpertown Xeon C0 and E0, Jasper Forest, Penryn/QC, SoFIA 3GR, Wolfdale, Wolfdale Xeon, Yorkfield, and Yorkfield Xeon families. The list includes various Xeons, Core CPUs, Pentiums, Celerons, and Atoms – just about everything Intel makes.

Most [of] the CPUs listed above are oldies that went on sale between 2007 and 2011, so it is likely few remain in normal use.


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by hamsterdan on Wednesday April 04 2018, @09:22PM

    by hamsterdan (2829) on Wednesday April 04 2018, @09:22PM (#662640)

    My HTPC is running a HP (Asus) workstation board with 8GB DDR2, a Q6600 Core 2 Quad, a Radeon 7750 with a 120GB OCZ Agility2 SSD for OS, a 1TB WD drive. It records TV with a QuadHD from Hauppauge (ATSC). Sound is handled by a Soundblaster Xfi with DTS encoding to my AVR via optical. Onboard sound is routed to my vintage stereo gear for my Airport emulator. Not as fast as my i7 tower, but gets the job done.

    Playing with OSX on an old Optiplex 745 too, no need for a more recent machine

    Starting Score:    1  point
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