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Major hardware bug quietly being patched in the open

Accepted submission by LoRdTAW at 2018-01-01 17:03:38 from the why-are-we-still-doing-departments?-tradition? dept.
Security

Spotted over on HN:
http://pythonsweetness.tumblr.com/post/169166980422/the-mysterious-case-of-the-linux-page-table/amp? [tumblr.com]

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!


Original Submission