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OpenBSD's De Raadt Pans 'Incredibly Bad' Disclsoure of Intel CPU Bug (itwire.com)

troublemaker_23 quotes ITWire: Disclosure of the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities, which affect mainly Intel CPUs, was handled "in an incredibly bad way" by both Intel and Google, the leader of the OpenBSD project Theo de Raadt claims. "Only Tier-1 companies received advance information, and that is not responsible disclosure -- it is selective disclosure," De Raadt told iTWire in response to queries. "Everyone below Tier-1 has just gotten screwed."
In the interview de Raadt also faults intel for moving too fast in an attempt to beat their competition. "There are papers about the risky side-effects of speculative loads -- people knew... Intel engineers attended the same conferences as other company engineers, and read the same papers about performance enhancing strategies -- so it is hard to believe they ignored the risky aspects. I bet they were instructed to ignore the risk."

He points out this will make it more difficult to develop kernel software, since "Suddenly the trickiest parts of a kernel need to do backflips to cope with problems deep in the micro-architecture." And he also complains that Intel "has been exceedingly clever to mix Meltdown (speculative loads) with a separate issue (Spectre). This is pulling the wool over the public's eyes..."

"It is a scandal, and I want repaired processors for free."

366 comments

  1. Freedom demands Open Hardware also by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    OpenCores.org
    J-Core.org
    riscv.org
    gaisler.com
    OpenSPARC

    There is a path forward, but it will take Fab relationships and people willing to test and then buy the first practical and fully open systems...

    1. Re:Freedom demands Open Hardware also by Wootery · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This is a question of quality, not idealism and perverse incentives.

      We aren't talking about IME here. You seem to be blindly assuming that Open hardware is always free of faults.

    2. Re:Freedom demands Open Hardware also by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Not sure about others but some are available for purchase.

      "SiFive has declared that 2018 will be the year of RISC V Linux processors" - Linux Now Has its First Open Source RISC-V Processor, Slashdot.

      To answer AC's question a few moths later: "What's the big advantage with RISC over ARM or x86?"

      Meltdown, Spetre.

    3. Re:Freedom demands Open Hardware also by Entrope · · Score: 4, Informative

      ARM is a RISC architecture, and plenty of RISC architectures suffer from Spectre. Meltdown is an Intel-only bug -- AMD doesn't have it because they implemented an obvious security rule, and presumably Cyrix and other x86 implementations didn't either.

    4. Re:Freedom demands Open Hardware also by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      This is a question of quality, not idealism and perverse incentives.

      We aren't talking about IME here. You seem to be blindly assuming that Open hardware is always free of faults.

      This is a question of quality. You seem to be blindly assuming that starts and ends with hardware faults. It does not, and it was the main point Theo was making here. Quality also has to do with how you handle faults when they happen.

      And I'd sure as shit trust an open community a lot more than a proprietary closed one hell-bent on protecting profits at all costs. How many more bugs does Intel know about right now that they refuse to disclose because it might affect stock price? I rest my case.

    5. Re: Freedom demands Open Hardware also by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How do you suddenly know all that just now, and not a few months ago to enlighten us?

    6. Re:Freedom demands Open Hardware also by slashrio · · Score: 1

      RISC V = Risk Free?

      --
      "Trump!!", the new Godwin.
    7. Re: Freedom demands Open Hardware also by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      And what incentive does an open community have? When a fault is found who will give you your free CPU?

    8. Re:Freedom demands Open Hardware also by Wootery · · Score: 0

      And I'd sure as shit trust an open community a lot more than a proprietary closed one hell-bent on protecting profits at all costs

      And I'm broadly inclined to agree with you - Linux does a better job than the major commercial OS offerings, and smaller tech companies very often do an awful job handling security issues.

      It's not exactly night-and-day, however. Neither Linux nor Windows are formally-verified, safety-critical OSs. They both have bugs. Same in other kinds of software: Postgres and MySQL contain bugs, and so do Oracle Database and SQL Server. I imagine it would be much the same with open hardware (if it ever exists).

    9. Re:Freedom demands Open Hardware also by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Some ARM processors are too. Have you read anything on the matter Mr Score5Informative?
       

      According to ARM, some of their processors are also affected.

    10. Re: Freedom demands Open Hardware also by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Don't you get bored of posting the same thing every 10 minutes?

    11. Re:Freedom demands Open Hardware also by AHuxley · · Score: 3, Informative

      Re "Open hardware is always free of faults."
      We have seen what the best names in some sectors of the computing community did for security for years.
      PRISM (surveillance program) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
      Open software and open hardware is a good start at having a few people have a look at computer security.
      The big brands keep failing.
      Generations of failed hardware, junk encryption, CPU's, OS and networking. Backdoors, trapdoors.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    12. Re:Freedom demands Open Hardware also by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      yeah, RISC started the concept of Branch Prediction. It's just that nobody has tried to crack these microbrew processor because of their tiny userbase.

    13. Re:Freedom demands Open Hardware also by Wootery · · Score: 1

      Proprietary software tends to be imperfect. Proprietary hardware tends to be imperfect. Free and Open Source software tends to be imperfect.

      Complete the square: what should we expect of Free and Open Source hardware?

      If your answer is 'perfection', I remind you that we're discussing engineering problems, not mathematical proofs.

    14. Re:Freedom demands Open Hardware also by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      To answer AC's question a few moths later: "What's the big advantage with RISC over ARM or x86?"

      Before discussing the advantage you need to discuss the difference. What's the difference between RISC over ARM or x86? Nothing.

      a) ARM is RISC
      b) x86 is CISC only in the instruction set. The processors themselves have had far more in common with RISC processors since the days of the Pentium Pro.

      CISC CPUs don't really exist in modern computing.

    15. Re: Freedom demands Open Hardware also by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Can /. start shadowbanning this tripe? It simply does not qualify as 'discussion'. It's like some dingbat that runs up to other people having a conversation and farting loudly.

    16. Re:Freedom demands Open Hardware also by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      Nobody expects perfection. Just some quality control for the amount paid.
      Just not shipping junk encryption, OS and generations of CPU would be a great start.
      Good software by good people can then be designed and tested over good hardware.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    17. Re:Freedom demands Open Hardware also by Megol · · Score: 1

      Not sure about others but some are available for purchase.

      "SiFive has declared that 2018 will be the year of RISC V Linux processors" - Linux Now Has its First Open Source RISC-V Processor, Slashdot.

      To answer AC's question a few moths later: "What's the big advantage with RISC over ARM or x86?"

      Meltdown, Spetre.

      Meltdown? Nope. You can buy high performance x86 processors now that isn't affected, you could have bought high performance x86 processors in the past that weren't affected. So that's simply put bullshit, either you are lying or not knowing what you are talking about.

      Spectre? Nope. Nothing about it is x86 or ARM specific and the only reason RISC V isn't affected is that it didn't use the performance enhancing features other high-end processors did. Now that's a good slogan right? "We are so slow that we missed a stray bullet".

    18. Re:Freedom demands Open Hardware also by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ARM is a RISC architecture, and plenty of RISC architectures suffer from Spectre.

      He is talking about RISC V, an open CPU architecture not ARM.

      Meltdown is an Intel-only bug -- AMD doesn't have it because they implemented an obvious security rule

      If it's so obvious, then how has it escaped everyone's notice for twenty two years?

      Seriously, just be quiet. You didn't have a clue that anything was wrong until someone told you...more than two decades later.

    19. Re: Freedom demands Open Hardware also by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Better than Intels slogan: "5-30% slowdowns aren't bad, we cheated to bring you the performance, now it's gone, shut up and take it"

    20. Re:Freedom demands Open Hardware also by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 1

      is that it didn't use the performance enhancing features other high-end processors did.

      RISC-V and most of PPC's books haven't changed in a while. The I use in new product isn't that different than the Power PC G4 I had growing up.

      If the e200 cores aren't affected it means that your infotainment system can't spy on something else in your car's ECM.

      RTCA/DO-254, Design Assurance Guidance for Airborne Electronic Hardware isn't a small certification / classification. If the PPC e200 cores were affected the US military would take notice.

      Then they can use "So safe the US military trusts us for your protection". And if the JSF can use an e200 core the military is going to demand something unaffected for their internal cloud.

    21. Re:Freedom demands Open Hardware also by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The advantage of speculative execution is larger with a longer pipeline. To some extent all modern processors have fairly long pipelines to tolerate high clock speeds, but the complex instruction set chips have it way worse. Intel chips have effectively become RISC microcode chips with front and back end translators, which makes for a very long pipeline. So nobody wants to ditch speculative execution, but there are more performance-reasonable options with a simpler instruction set and code that more closely resembles what the processor is actually doing.

    22. Re:Freedom demands Open Hardware also by stoatwblr · · Score: 1

      "Nobody expects perfection. Just some quality control for the amount paid. "

      And support after sale, rather than abandoning the product when it gets "too hard" to handle problems.

    23. Re:Freedom demands Open Hardware also by stoatwblr · · Score: 1

      > a) ARM is RISC

      The Cortex ranges are gathering decidedly unreduced instruction sets.

      > b) x86 is CISC only in the instruction set. The processors themselves have had far more in common with RISC processors since the days of the Pentium Pro.

      IIRC the original AMD K5 was a wrapped 29050 RISC processor with strapped on FPU (and it ran 50% faster than equivalent Intel CPUs for integer ops, which was what mattered most of the time)

      The problem with having a massive instruction set is the increasing risk of errors in the conversion microcode, not all correctable.
      Intel CPUs may be RISC at their core but in their quest to try and beat out memory latencies (speculative prereading, etc) they got sloppy and now we're all paying the price.

      If DRAM memory latencies were down in single digit nanoseconds for random access we wouldn't be having this entire thread because the insanely long pipelines wouldn't be needed. It's all very well clocking your ram at 3000MHz and getting out 8 words at a time, but when you have to wait a few ten/hundred-thousand CPU clocks for what you asked for, whatever you're doing has to wait too.

      Ram has increasingly been the bottleneck for the last decade. At this point we need (affordable) lower latency system ram, not faster SSDs. A large chunk of CPU optimisation and complexity since 2002 has been geared at getting around unshortenable latencies. You can only get so far ahead of yourself before the wheels fall off.

    24. Re:Freedom demands Open Hardware also by michael_wojcik · · Score: 1

      No existing RISC-V designs are susceptible to Spectre. There's nothing in the RISC-V ISA that makes it magically immune to Spectre. If someone implements a RISC-V CPU that has speculative execution and caches, then it's open to Spectre-class attacks, unless specific (expensive) steps are taken to block them.

      Some ARM CPUs have Spectre vulnerabilities. Others do not, and the ARM whitepaper on Spectre describes the mitigations they've already designed for the Spectre variants described in the original Spectre paper.

      No non-Intel CPUs are susceptible to Meltdown, as far as I've seen; Meltdown is a specific design error, allowing speculative loads across privilege boundaries, while Spectre is a family of issues with speculative execution and side channels.

    25. Re:Freedom demands Open Hardware also by michael_wojcik · · Score: 1

      RISC started the concept of Branch Prediction

      It's not clear to me what you mean by this. I believe DEC filed the first branch-prediction patent, in 1989; that was for the Alpha, which was indeed a RISC CPU (back when the RISC/CISC distinction was still useful). But you seem to be implying that has some relationship to RISC-V, which is far from clear. All but the smallest modern general-purpose CPUs use speculative execution, including branch prediction.

    26. Re:Freedom demands Open Hardware also by michael_wojcik · · Score: 1

      CISC CPUs don't really exist in modern computing

      IBM's z is arguably still a CISC architecture. Mostly it does the CISC-ISA-decoded-to-RISC-micro-ops dance, but the execution cores still contain a fairly complicated set of features, such as FPUs for both binary and decimal operands.

      Really, though, the RISC-CISC dichotomy no longer makes much sense, which I take to be the force of your point. And while z is still important in business computing, and a cash cow, it's a niche architecture compared to x86 or ARM.

  2. "I want repaired processors for free" by Lisandro · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You know, he's not wrong. This is, in impact, way bigger than Intel's FDIV fiasco and that ended up in recalls.

    1. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by Hal_Porter · · Score: 2, Funny

      Free i5s and i7s! I want to believe!

      --
      echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
    2. Re: "I want repaired processors for free" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      How far does the recall go? Should there just be a recall for Meltdown, or does that also extend to Spectre?

      There wasn't a software workaround for the FDIV bug, which is why there was a recall. The F00F bug did have a software workaround, which is why there wasn't a recall for that bug. Meltdown also has a software workaround, though one with a potentially significant performance hit. Meltdown seems more like the F00F bug in that respect. Arguably, Spectre is a better candidate for a recall than Meltdown. Although there is a software workaround for it (see retopline), it cannot be implemented just by patching the operating system.

      The problem here is that some of these features were designed over 20 years ago, when security wasn't as much of a priority. The feature worked and didn't present obvious security issues, so nobody tried to fix what didn't seem to be broken. It wouldn't surprise me at all if many other potentially serious vulnerabilities were lurking in hardware.

    3. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Some of the newer computers have CPU soldered into the motherboard

      In cases like that it is useless to get 'replacement CPU'

      Even for computers which one can change the CPU, not many users know how to do that correctly

    4. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by TheDarkMaster · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Replaced/repaired, not free. Having said that the problem will be how to replace processors that have become obsolete and therefore out of the market, and where you can not simply replace all the associated hardware to pick up a current and patched processor. And I suspect that most of those who can change the associated hardware will simply migrate to AMD instead of taking another Intel.

      --
      Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
    5. Re: "I want repaired processors for free" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wrong. Meltdown has a software mitigation. There is no fix or "workaround".

    6. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by Zocalo · · Score: 3, Interesting

      He's not wrong, both on the recall (which I'm not holding my breath on - I fully expect Intel to fight that to the bitter end given how much more painful than the Pentium replacements that would be for them) and the handling of the entire situation. There's clearly been a very high bar set betweeen those who were given the heads-up and those who were not, especially amongst service providers where it appears that only the *really* big players were in the loop. In the case of BSD devs specifically being left out of the loop though, perhaps Theo needs to take Linus' advice to Intel and a good hard look in the mirror as I seem to recall a similar incident not so long ago where the BSD devs were in the loop, but Theo refused to play ball and turned it into a free for all. I don't have the slightest problem with Theo standing up for his principles, but to do so without expecting there to be some rather obvious blowback should there be a similar situation in the future is rather naive, to say the least.

      --
      UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
    7. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by thegarbz · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Isn't he? Firstly clearly the distribution was too wide as it was given there was a moratorium on disclosure scheduled for tomorrow to allow all patching to be in place in advance.

      Secondly he has in the past jumped the gun on responsible disclosure, parroting OpenBSD as the secure alternative patting himself on the back for being the first.

      Thirdly there are multiple groups now that refuse to work with him for this very reason. The OpenSSL team also disclosed to others before OpenBSD for the same reason.

      He shat in his bed, and now is complaining that he has to sleep in it.

    8. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Even for computers which one can change the CPU, not many users know how to do that correctly"

      then that can/should be handled by computer shops, like car dealerships do for auto recalls of all kinds

    9. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is what we get putting all eggs in one basket. Just larger and larger fuckups.

      Captcha: comedic

    10. Re: "I want repaired processors for free" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      FDIV was absolutely possible to workaround in software. Not without a significant performance hit though.

    11. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Much like vaccination, it's impact will be down to how prevalent fixes are. If you're not patch but everyone else is, it won't likely be exploited much in the wild.
      FDIV was a mathematically incorrect operation.

      Meltdown is much more like the F00F bug - for which there was a work around, and no recall.

    12. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by Lisandro · · Score: 2

      No, it is not. There were a number of F00F bug workarounds, all implementable at OS level and with negligible (if any) performance hit.

      Meltdown is nothing like it. The performance impact depends largely on the load type the CPU experiences, but it is estimated to range between 5% and 30% - which is terrible.

    13. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by xxxLCxxx · · Score: 1

      You know, he's not wrong. This is, in impact, way bigger than Intel's FDIV fiasco and that ended up in recalls.

      Agreed. However, I suspect that we haven't seen the end of it yet. The 'Meltdown' bug is a straight forward problem. I somehow doubt they didn't see this. IMHO this raises the question if there aren't more issues related to caching, speculative execution and multiprocessing just 'waiting to be found'. Therefore, what would they be replacing your faulty processors with? ;-)
      It speaks volumes that Intel CEO Krzanich (illegally) sold as many shares 'as legally possible' before this was released to the public.

    14. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by Hal_Porter · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Oh I agree 1000%. It's not a freebie, it's Intel living up to the implicit contract to provide a CPU with the performance it was benchmarked when I bought it and not allow user mode stuff to read kernel memory.

      In the UK you could make an argument that a processor with that bug was 'not fit for purpose'. Of course it's in the US that a class action suit has the highest chance of success and outside the US Intel will probably follow the US lead.

      It'll be interesting to watch. Then again all my Intel chips are soldered to laptop motherboards. And rather elderly laptops at that - it's not like I'm going to convince Intel to convince Asus and Apple to recall motherboards that are out of warranty and do BGA rework to replace the CPUs.

      However if I had machines with socketed CPUs and I was in the US I'd join a class action suit. Mind you Intel will presumably claim KPTI and its equivalents on Windows and macOS fix the security problem and any change in performance doesn't violate any sort of contractual agreement. Which they may or may not get away with. I think they probably will.

      --
      echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
    15. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by nctritech · · Score: 4, Insightful

      A recall of every CPU since 2006 would decimate (if the recall isn't heavily utilized) or likely even bankrupt Intel. The Core 2 generation is the oldest practical Intel CPU (yes, I know this is a subjective statement, thus "practical") on which you can run Windows 10 and modern software. Every computer running Windows 10 and an Intel chip would need CPU replacement. We are talking quite literally several billion processors since Intel sells a few hundred million per year. Intel's market cap is over 200 billion dollars, but even if they were expected to replace 1 billion $100 processors that's half of the company's value. Since we're talking about 11 years worth of processors there is potential for the number to be more like 3-4 billion processors. This is purely the financial side and ignores all of the logistics which would be a totally separate nightmare. Intel is incapable of manufacturing anywhere close to that many processors in a year ESPECIALLY if they continue to sell new processors while doing the recall.

      Intel simply cannot afford to recall all affected processors. Do not expect it to happen because it won't. They will obscurity-by-corporate-speak their way out of this in a way that could make Enron's obfuscated lies look tame. If there were no software mitigation they would have few straws to grasp at, but the OS workarounds give them a tiny escape door and you better believe that they'll hire a whole crew of bulldozers to force this massve elephant through it.

    16. Re: "I want repaired processors for free" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Oh sure, just disable the 8087 hardware calls, trap and emulate.

      But the math co-processor is just that. An optional co-processor.

      When the main CPU is bugged you are kinda screwed.

      Remember SUN and their E10K faults at launch bringing down top level DNS servers?

      We've had these kinds of issues since forever (16-bit sw only i386 anyone?). This is just a really big one as it goes all the way back to the Pentium Pro.

    17. Re: "I want repaired processors for free" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't remember getting a new cpu to fix my fdiv bug. I got a patch from microsoft.

    18. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by Zocalo · · Score: 2

      That's exactly my reasoning. By comparison the Pentium recall was easy; die and pin-out compatible CPUs were still in production, but even for a partial recall here it's likely Intel would have to not only dust off old silicon designs, but the associated fabrication processes and packages as well. And that's before you start to factor in the higher proportion of CPUs now that are not really end-user, or even workshop replaceable, because they are phyically attached to motherboards rather than socketed. Their cheapest option has got to be to fight this all the way through the courts - during which time many of the CPUs will be retired - and then in the worst case pay up the legal fees and some lip-service compensation to anyone who can still find their receipts.

      --
      UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
    19. Re: "I want repaired processors for free" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Well, you missed out. Intel recalled all FDIV-affected processors back in early 1995, to the tune of half a billion dollars.

    20. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by StormReaver · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Firstly clearly the distribution was too wide as it was given there was a moratorium on disclosure scheduled for tomorrow to allow all patching to be in place in advance.

      You largely validated his posting with this one sentence. This is exactly what he's complaining about. How do you expect patching to be in place in advance for OpenBSD if the kernel developers weren't notified? Since OpenBSD isn't Tier-1, so they weren't notified. Apparently, only Microsoft was notified in advance, which is a clusterfuck so big, that should be reason enough to prove willful negligence by Intel.

      I completely agree with Theo.

    21. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by AmiMoJo · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Some people are seeing >50% performance loss. Take a look at this graph: https://www.epicgames.com/fort...

      Clearly they are going to need to spend some serious cash on upgrading their servers. The thread is full of players who can't connect.

      Interestingly Intel's CPU data pages contain benchmarks. It will be interesting to see if they update them.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    22. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Great post, but

      A recall of every CPU since 2006 would decimate (if the recall isn't heavily utilized) or likely even bankrupt Intel.

      Too bad. Actions have consequences.

    23. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      As I recall the Pentium recall was option, i.e. you had to contact them to get your CPU replaced rather than them actively contacting you.

      That seems like a reasonable way to handle it. Most people probably won't care enough to get their CPU replaced, but those who want the fix can get it. Of course it gets tricky with soldered on CPUs, for those they would just have to offer compensation.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    24. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by swb · · Score: 1

      I won't argue he's wrong, but I think as fast as CPUs change you'd have to have across the board reductions in workload capacity by a significant number (ie, the 30% touted initially) to be able to claim harm and justify a recall.

      So far what I've read is that performance in some storage applications has taken a small hit, but generally it's not a meaningful hit overall in CPU performance.

      And even if you could prove a performance hit, how reliable are the numbers? Workloads vary a lot. And if you're not operating at the limit of your hardware, is going from 45% idle CPU to 25% idle CPU really a performance "loss"? It's arguable that you had surplus capacity to begin with and that unless you frequently max out your CPUs, you didn't really lose any capacity.

    25. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by llZENll · · Score: 1

      What if they replace 1 billion $1 dollar processors? Because if you manufactured a processor from 10 years ago with todays technology, it would probably be in the $1 range... And they wouldn't even have to replace them for free, just give me an option, I would gladly pay $50-$100 to have a drop in replacement of my sandy bridge that used 20% of the power and probably didn't even need a heatsink that is manufactured with the latest technology, but they won't, because they know I'm forced to upgrade to a latest offering, and buy a new cpu, motherboard, power supply, memory, etc They hardware isn't not even what annoys me, it's the reconfiguration and reinstallation of all of the software, for little to no speed improvement...

    26. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by coofercat · · Score: 2

      I'm inclined to agree, and I suspect Intel will negotiate (in court?) to do a recall of (say) all the chips on a device still in warranty or some such. That way there's at least a reasonable way to do it in a practical sense. Having a recall that you can't actually perform isn't really going to help anyone.

      Not sure about the US, but in the UK there's provision in the law for stuff you couldn't possibly have known about. That is, let's say you make a teleporter and the world starts using it. If (in a few years time) it turns out that using it causes cancer, then you can't be held accountable if there was no way you could have known about it. Of course, once you did know about it and tried to cover it up, then you're absolutely liable. It's possible Intel could claim that they only found out about this problem in (say) 2014, thus they're only liable for the last three and a bit years of chip sales - but if some of the comments above are true, then they knew the risk when they designed the thing, and so almost certainly confirmed the problem sometime shortly afterwards.

      I also wonder if I'd now be able to ask Apple for a replacement Macbook, as it's still in warranty and is 'broken'. This is somewhat untested because they could argue that it's still perfectly fine to use (perhaps in certain conditions), whereas I bought a machine which I believed would have reasonable security. Even if this whole idea was a bit shaky, it might cause Apple to go after Intel for all the laptops they've sold over the last few years. I'm sure they're currently talking to them about the chips they've ordered but haven't taken delivery of yet, and quite probably the last few batches they did receive though.

      This may also set a precedent for all those dodgy webcams that turn out to be insecure... could be interesting.

    27. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by Lisandro · · Score: 1

      Datacenters which already patched are apparently getting a performance hit in the high two-digits. Epic, for example, has people complaining because users cannot connect to game servers after the patch doubled servers CPU load.

    28. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by MSG · · Score: 4, Insightful

      How do you expect patching to be in place in advance for OpenBSD if the kernel developers weren't notified?

      You're missing the point. The OpenBSD team would be notified if they cooperated with the temporary embargoes that are in place to provide vendors time to patch before attacks are developed and deployed. They haven't, in the past, so they're no longer in the group that gets advance notice.

    29. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by erapert · · Score: 1

      Do you have proof that Intel deliberately implemented Meltdown, then lied and covered it up for decades until it was exposed?

      Because otherwise you're being asinine. There's no such thing as perfect products or products that won't break down or bug-free software or bug-free hardware.

    30. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by Hal_Porter · · Score: 1

      Some people are seeing >50% performance loss. Take a look at this graph: https://www.epicgames.com/fort...

      Clearly they are going to need to spend some serious cash on upgrading their servers. The thread is full of players who can't connect.

      Interesting. I reckon they'd have a case against Intel

      --
      echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
    31. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Intel's boxed processors carry a 3 year warranty. Tha's a lot of replacements, although not as bad as it could be. I'm wondering what they'll do if we send one in as defective.

    32. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by thegarbz · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You largely validated his posting with this one sentence. This is exactly what he's complaining about.

      And if you don't take that sentence out of context you'll have seen the point. What happened to OpenBSD and Theo is the fault of precisely one person: Theo.

      Hell when we discussed this on Slashdot there were a lot of posters saying that Theo's actions at the time would hurt the OpenBSD community as people would not disclose the vulnerabilities to them. Looks like they were right too.

      I agree the OpenBSD community is in a bad place. I also agree with Theo, but only in that his actions have spoken louder than his words.

    33. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Looks like Intel might already have a solution:

      https://software.intel.com/en-...

    34. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      what would they be replacing your faulty processors with?

      That's a thought that has occurred to me; do these people even know how to build a spectre-proof CPU that performs as well as the vulnerable parts? Is this a solved problem?

    35. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They certainly deliberately implemented it, in that they made design choices that no other CPU manufacturer did.

      As for what the GP post said, inactions also have consequences. At best, Intel was negligent in their processor design. The knew or should have known (because it is demonstrable that other companies knew) that allowing privileged access even speculatively was a risk.

    36. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      You know, he's not wrong. This is, in impact, way bigger than Intel's FDIV fiasco and that ended up in recalls.

      No it's not. It is more wide spread but it certainly isn't bigger.

      - The FDIV scenario could cause a wrong result from a processor. This can merely cause a security breach.
      - Security can be layered and worked around. A calculator that produces the wrong answer checked by a calculator with the same fault can not work around itself.
      - This fiasco relies on a targeted attack on a specific user. The FDIV bug is something a user would hit at random (and according to a citation needed quote on Wikipedia would do so every 24 months)

      In its impact the FDIV bug was far more serious than meltdown or spectre.

    37. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by Lisandro · · Score: 1

      The impact of FDIV was a floating point precision error after the fourth digit on 1 in 9 billion divides. Meltdown is a bug allowing unauthorized code to read all protected memory available on all Intel CPUs manufactured over the last ~2 decades.

      Gauge their seriousness as you wish.

    38. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 1

      How about deliberately ignored warnings about security problems with the speculative methods they used?

      Because, if anyone warned about potential problems (they did) and Intel knew about it (they had to have known) and ignored the warnings (they did) then it becomes willful. They didn't have to plant the problem, all they had to do was ignore the warnings.

      Or as I keep telling my boss, security is paramount, usability is not. This doesn't mean you can ignore usability, it is that it isn't prime factor in deciding anything. Passwords can be a pain in the ass, but not having them is worse.

      --
      Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
    39. Re: "I want repaired processors for free" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > Remember SUN and their E10K faults at launch bringing down top level DNS servers?

      Google doesn't.

    40. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by swb · · Score: 2

      It's hard to understand if this is Epic finding a convenient whipping boy for their problems or an actual problem associated with the patch. There's always complaining about gaming server performance, outages, etc, so it's not like they couldn't have other problems and that this is just being used as an excuse.

    41. Re: "I want repaired processors for free" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Free repair isn't going to happen. Decades ago I had my very first traffic accident, determined to be the other guy's fault. I was fascinated by how the other driver's insurance determined how much to pay, and one thing that stuck out was that one of my tires was ruined but they didn't pay enough on the tire to replace it. And there was an explanation: the tire was already somewhat worn at the time of the collision. I got paid something like 50% the cost of the tire.

      This tells me how Intel's liability lawyers (who for all I know, might actually work for Intel's insurance company) would present the case. Your CPU has an expected lifetime of n years. It's true that it had the defect all along, for the i years that you used it. But you didn't get exploited (as far as you know, and they'd say the burden would be on you to show it happened) and it did run full-speed since you didn't need to mitigate Meltdown. Basically, they'd argue that you got what you paid for, up until a few days ago. Now, maybe, they owe you something for your processor when has "suddenly" broke, but they'd argue that until the bugs became widely known and slow-down-your-computer countermeasures got used, nothing bad happened to you. You got your money's worth during that time. That's what they'd say.

      For anything that they're no longer producing, they aren't going to replace with a good one, period. New production lines for old designs simply isn't going to happen. (Nobody is getting a replacement Pentium 3, not even the biggest government customers.) What might happen, is they could pay you a portion of its value. If i<3 (the period of a warranty, perhaps) they might pay up to 100%. Maybe. They might have arguments for they they shouldn't have to. But for i>3 when it's no longer in warranty, they're going to say you already got some of its value: i/n. 7 year expected life and you've already had it for 3 years? You're being paid no more than 4/7 of its cost.

      And if i is 20 years, you're getting nothing.

    42. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by Lisandro · · Score: 1

      Well, it is likely. Still, that graph is horrible to look at.

    43. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by epine · · Score: 1

      I don't have the slightest problem with Theo standing up for his principles, but to do so without expecting there to be some rather obvious blowback should there be a similar situation in the future is rather naive, to say the least.

      What evidence do you have that Theo didn't expect this to play out exactly as it has?

      Is he obligated to say "I saw this coming" if he saw this coming?

      You seem to think that Job #1 in these situations is maintaining an unbroken signalling posture that you're truly inside the loop.

      There's a name for that.

      Insecure.

    44. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Have you ever actually done a class action suit?

      You get $8 and a coupon after 2 years of waiting.

      They're pointless.

    45. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by networkBoy · · Score: 4, Informative

      Bwahahahahaaaa
      it doesn't work that way at all.

      Old designs would be for different process technologies. As the tech changes the DRCs (Design rule checks) change as well.

      You can't run a design on a process it wasn't made for, the resulting product simply won't work correctly (if at all).

      If the CPU was designed for a gate width of 35nM then it was designed with biasing around that gate width's leakage. If you then try to spin that part on a 14nM fab the biasing of the gates is all wrong and it will (likely catch fire) not work at all because of such high leakage.

      Additionally, price doesn't scale the way you imply. A wafer start costs about $1K. Doesn't matter what process you run on it (it does, but not really all that much). The cost per part is based on the number of functional parts per wafer at the end. Thus going from an 8 to a 12 inch wafer lowers cost even though the process change requires a $2.2bn fab to be built, you have gone from 201 sq inches to 452 square inches, over *double* the yield.
      Same thing from process shrinks, you cut the area used by your transistor gates and you make the die smaller, then you can fit more on a wafer.

      Thing is, Intel may not even have fabs capable of making the older parts any more, even if they wanted to. Process tech has evolved, IDK if they even have an 8" fabs left...

      To just "redesign" the part for the new process is not realistic either.

      TLDR: To make an old part will cost the same or more than it did when it was the latest and greatest.

      --
      whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
    46. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by networkBoy · · Score: 1

      the posted CPU utilization graphs look pretty obvious :/

      I think they were on the edge and this shoved them over, but now they need to spin up more servers and deal with that, plus killed margin.

      --
      whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
    47. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by Hal_Porter · · Score: 1

      No dude. They'll give you, and more importantly, me a free i7.

      --
      echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
    48. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by BRTB · · Score: 1

      Idle CPU uses less power. When CPU idle time is lowered, that directly translates into additional power consumption. Remember some high-end CPUs have TDPs of 100W or more at full tilt. Now take a whole datacenter of those, decrease their idle time by 25% and you'll see a substantial increase on your power bill.

    49. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't care if the attorneys get all the cash. I'd like to see a huge judgement against Intel if alleged contract violations are proven in court but only because I'm a dreamer hoping to live long enough to see my country re-adopt the rule of law as its M.O. With NO exceptions based on class/wealth/connections/party affiliation.

    50. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Because if you manufactured a processor from 10 years ago with todays technology, it would probably be in the $1 range.

      To paraphrase Charles Babbage, I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a statement.

    51. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by tlhIngan · · Score: 1

      You know, he's not wrong. This is, in impact, way bigger than Intel's FDIV fiasco and that ended up in recalls.

      The question is what are they replacing the processors WITH?

      Speculative execution and OOO execution and branch preduction goes back nearly 30 years (Intel Pentium), and it's likely been bugged ever since then.

      And it's not like Intel will be able to fix the bug even in the next generation of processors they release this year - at the very earliest it would be 2019 or even 2020 before the bug is fixed. There are very long lead times.

      FDIV was easy - the bug was fixed in silicon and it only affected certain lines of chips (the 60/66MHz notably, and by the time the recall happened, Intel was doing 100+MHz ones).

      Meltdown, not so much, because it affects every processor and it's not something that can be fixed without a silicon revision quickly. I suppose Intel could replace everyone's i7 with the two processors that don't have the bug, but I'm pretty sure no one would be happy going from i7s to Atoms.

    52. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by Lisandro · · Score: 2

      There's no simple solution for Spectre, as is it much more widespread and affects pretty much every modern CPU. The only viable way is some sort of software-based mitigation.

      De Raadt's rant was about Meltdown though, and he's absolutely right. Meltdown is a Intel-only fuckup; someone decided that protection domains should not apply to execution speculation in order to boost performance.

    53. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Market cap has nothing to do with bankruptcy. Regarding the number of CPUs, if we assume 250 mln in sales per year and ten years of liability we are talking 2.5 bln potential fixes/replacements. Some high percentage of that number will be CPUs that have been retired in one way or another so will not need to be fixed or replaced. Another percentage will determine that it isn't worthwhile to participate in the fix / replacement. IN addition, not all Intel CPUs produced during this period were vulnerable. Intel's cost per cpu varies dramatically from model to model and retail price is not a good indicator. If we assume a total cost of $50 per cpu (so the cost of the cpu, the cost of managing the recall, the cost of shipping, the cost of support, etc.) and 1.5 bln CPUs we get a total program cost to Intel of $75 bln. These costs would not have to be paid in a single year. If Intel spread them out over five years the cost would be $15 bln a year which Intel could handle. In all probability the costs used here are significantly exaggerated and the program would cost them a lot less than these numbers.

    54. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by erapert · · Score: 2

      ...security is paramount, usability is not.

      This is exactly reversed: without something to use there is nothing to secure.
      In other words, before making a car safe one must first have a car. So, while important (and different people place different importance on it) security is not the paramount.

    55. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by mikael · · Score: 1

      I tried installing modern Linux on an old laptop with a Pentium IV. It just did not run, not even getting past the boot loading.

      --
      Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
    56. Re: "I want repaired processors for free" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The mitigation is a workaround.

    57. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They go hand in hand.

      Someone defined security as being able to rely on your system to behave in a predictable manner. Of course behavior = use.

    58. Re: "I want repaired processors for free" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Theo gave you those answers. I guess you didn't bother reading.

    59. Re: "I want repaired processors for free" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Slashdot just had an article about installing "modern" Linux on old pentium processors.

    60. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      OpenBSD is dying . . . errrr make that dead.

      AmigaOS is used by more people than OpenBSD.

    61. Re: "I want repaired processors for free" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Those Temp embargos are bullshit and you know it.

    62. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by eth1 · · Score: 1

      A recall of every CPU since 2006 would decimate (if the recall isn't heavily utilized) or likely even bankrupt Intel.

      So? If I as an individual mess up, I can easily be sued into bankruptcy having to pay for it, so why should a company be any different.

      The numbers are in, and the company I work for will have to spend at least $5 million on new servers to make up the performance shortfall from the patches. Since the additional servers won't fit in the current data center space, that means potentially even more money to move. I wouldn't be surprised if the legal dept is winding up for a sueball already.

    63. Re: "I want repaired processors for free" by nctritech · · Score: 1

      486 processors.

    64. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Me too! But that's not how things work in the US. Anybody with a CPU that's out of support is SOL; if they are part of a class action that wins (bets on a buried clause somewhere that forces this all into individual arbitration?) they might get a coupon for a 5% (or $50, whichever is less) discount on a new computer if it's also Intel-based (and I'm one of those who would probably defect to AMD at least for the desktop system). The lawyers will get several 10s of million$. Even those with the newer chips - allegedly still in support - are SOL if they don't have socketed chips in a system less than 2 years old because only those systems will get firmware updates from the computer OEM (the only practical way to do it with Windows) regardless of whether or not Intel issues them. Really, we all need to join the class actions, even though at the moment they look kind of wimpy in terms of claims and provability. Amazing what motivated lawyers can find in discovery, though (100s of million$?).

    65. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They should go out of business, if a doctor failed so spectacularly he would lose his licence to practice.

    66. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by Tom · · Score: 1

      or likely even bankrupt Intel.

      That's called a business risk.

      Taking risks is the reason that profits are morally justified.

      No, I don't buy this "it would bankrupt us" bullshit. Should've thought about that before you decided to cut corners. When a real person robs a bank or shoots someone "but I have a mortgage to pay" is not a defense that works very well.

      I'm with Theo on this one, as unrealistic as it might seem. But hey, 40-hour work weeks seemed complete nonsense 200 years ago. Flying to the moon was SciFi less than a hundred years ago. "Unrealistic" doesn't mean "impossible". It needs a strong will.

      At the very least, they should pay everyone who owns an Intel processor the worst-case performance impact as compensation (e.g. 30% of the CPU value).

      But, of course, nothing of that kind will happen. Lawyers will tie this up in court until all the executives could sell their stock, then make a settlement for a fraction of that.

      --
      Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
    67. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Maybe your distro was compiled without support for P4s? Because both the Linux kerned and GNU ecosystem certainly support that line of CPUs.

    68. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by slashdot_commentator · · Score: 1

      One of the areas who's performance is clobbered by the meltdown & spectre bugs is virtualization and database operations. Its hugely dependent upon access to PTI, and a software fix to avoid the bugs basically hammers performance as much as 30%. That's pretty much why data centers are up in arms over this issue.

      The bugs can't be fixed with CPU microcode patches; it will take a physical rearchitecting of the chips. I am in total agreement that Intel should replace these CPUs with corrected, remanufactured chips (most prevalently purchased by datacenter and scientific purchasers).

      As for laptops and gamers, they'd barely notice a slowdown caused by the patches.

      --
      There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
    69. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Forget about the decades, how about months after Intel was told about the bug. But they keep selling the defect CPUs, don't they?

    70. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by slashdot_commentator · · Score: 1

      They wouldn't have to replace every CPU from 2006. Its really only virtualization and databases that get hit by software workaround. Remanufacture corrected CPUs, and only offer replacement to datacenter and scientific/quant customers, since Sandybridge (unless a case can be made that much older CPUs are still in operation and take a huge performance hit for the operations they tasked).

      Intel will still take a huge hit on their profits, but the reality is that businesses are only going to replace their CPUs if the cost is justified. Picture the amount of money they will have to pay having a technician remove and install the new chips (and manage the paperwork). They'd probably just obsolesce their oldest machines and buy new replacements.

      --
      There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
    71. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by slashdot_commentator · · Score: 1

      Why would Intel have to compensate laptop users? They were already provided a software fix. The only areas really hit by the software patch (in performance) were datacenters (virtualization) and databases. Laptop users aren't going to have noticeable slowdowns in websurfing and excel spreadsheets.

      --
      There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
    72. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by slashdot_commentator · · Score: 1

      I'm not seeing Intel having a legal obligation to replace EOLed chips, so there goes the need for previous generation wafer plants. Also, since only datacenters (virtualization) and databases have their performance noticeably degraded by the software patches, they're the only parties actually harmed and have a civil suit case.

      Intel should only offer rearchitected replacement CPUs for datacenter, finance and scientific customers for CPUs still under warranty (and perhaps a previous generation). Most of them would only bother if the restoration of performance was worth paying techs to replace CPUs. Intel could probably just lowball a partial refund for slightly older generation CPUs (with requisite paperwork, the physical CPU manufacture ID would do it), and everyone would just call it a day.

      --
      There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
    73. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by slashdot_commentator · · Score: 1

      Which "modern" linux distribution did you try?

      Its doable. Figure out the oldest kernel still supported by a distribution and kernel.org (v3.2 is still supported, and one probably could even go as recent as v3.16 for a Pentium IV).

      Make a catalog of hardware chips for media, northbridge, etc. and match them to a distribution version.

      You could try installing a Debian "wheezy" (LTS) version, or go "squeeze" if that doesn't work.

      I have almost no doubt that Slackware or Gentoo could be made to support that thing. You may not be able to run systemd, but then explain why that would be bad.

      Whichever distribution you choose, first only do a barebone install (kernel, glib, no gui/xwindows). If it boots and gets a working prompt, add on features from there.

      --
      There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
    74. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by jrumney · · Score: 1

      How do you expect OpenBSD kernel developers to be notified in advance, when they have already proven themselves untrustworthy by publishing patches and information about the vulnerability before the embargo ended?

      Arguably Google is now in this spot as well, though it seems their early publishing was an accident rather than a deliberate attempt to grab attention as the "most secure" OS fixing the bugs before all others. Android released the fix one day early, three days after Microsoft, so it seems Google was not prepared for its own disclosure, and certainly did not gain any advantage from it.

    75. Re: "I want repaired processors for free" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Really? You can't just have software replace FDIV with a (slow) software implementation, like everyone did before they got a hardware FDIV?

    76. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by mikael · · Score: 1

      It was a Sony Vaio PCG from 2002, long thrown out now.

      --
      Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
    77. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by toddestan · · Score: 1

      The problem with most precompiled binary distributions is that a lot of them have been dropping 32-bit support. A P4 laptop is almost certainly a 32-bit machine, as there were never any mobile 64-bit P4's (as laptops had switched to the Pentium M by then). However, any distribution that still supports 32-bit should run just fine on a Pentium 4 - I've run recent Debian, Ubuntu, and Slackware distros on P4's.

      Potential tricky areas might include if the machine has some funky propriety hardware, or if it's still stuck with the original 256-512 MB ram it likely shipped with.

    78. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by bingoUV · · Score: 1

      - The FDIV scenario could cause a wrong result from a processor. This can merely cause a security breach.

      - The FDIV scenario could merely cause a wrong result from a processor. This can cause a security breach.

      FTFY.

      - Security can be layered and worked around. A calculator that produces the wrong answer checked by a calculator with the same fault can not work around itself.

      The history, and pre-history of man (and other animals) is full of workarounds. No engineer knows the phrase "cannot be worked around", except maybe as a joke.

      You also changed the grammar cunningly between the 2 sentences.

      1. "Can be layered and worked around" - true for both security and wrong arithmetic answer.

      2. "Can not work around itself" : true for both security and wrong arithmetic answer.

      Sounds like Intel. Dishonest.

      --
      Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
    79. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Whatever you think of my grammar the fact is that a calculator that miscalculates and then makes decisions on its result is bad.
      A security vulnerability that requires executing code on the target combined with detailed knowledge of the target system in order to do achieve anything malicious is quite low in the grand scheme of security vulnerabilities. It is not wormable, it is not automatable, and it can be defended against through layered security.

      The FDIV bug was far worse, thinking otherwise is extremely shortsighted.

    80. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Gauge their seriousness as you wish.

      I did. A security vulnerability on such a low layer is not serious unless I have very serious failures on every other layer. This bug isn't wormable, MITMable, and requires someone to have a serious grudge directly against a person to do something useful. This is NSA out to get you level of bug and that makes it far less severe than script kiddies bugs, or bugs that rely on monetary extortion.

    81. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by bingoUV · · Score: 1

      Do you realize you are just restating your opinion, without defending the incorrect assertion that both can be worked around ?

        Also, both cannot work around themselves, they need a human to implement the work around once in the program after which the work around is in place until next software update.

      --
      Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
    82. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by bingoUV · · Score: 1

      s/that both can be worked around / that only one can be worked around /

      --
      Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
    83. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      No the FDIV bug had no workaround, hence the recall. One could argue that you software workaround would be to not use floating point operations, but that would be quite silly.

      Security is a process if you don't already have layered mitigation against Spectre/Meltdown bug then you don't care enough about your security to be concerned about this bug. Spectre/Meltdown is a bug that is present in every machine, but as a security issue will affect very few people.

      If you think my assertion is incorrect then you don't understand one or both of the issues.

    84. Re: "I want repaired processors for free" by kenh · · Score: 1

      Now take a whole datacenter of those, decrease their idle time by 25% and you'll see a substantial increase on your power bill.

      And in your mind, what percentage of a server's power usage is tied up in the CPU? I'd speculate about 20% after you figure in RAM and drives.

      So if the CPU is 20% of the total power of the server, and cpu power consumption increases 25% of the 30% low-power idle time (7.5%), that means the servers power usage will increase 1/5th of 7.5%, or 1.5%...

      If a 1.5% increase in server power usage is a "substantial increase" you can overcome that increase by running your data center 2-3 degrees warmer.

      Increased power usage is not a winning argument.

      --
      Ken
    85. Re:"I want repaired processors for free" by bingoUV · · Score: 1

      Ah, you must be saying "blah blah blah" and that is silly.

      Two can play this game, which is a boring one. Come back only of you have a real proof of lack of workaround about one and a real workaround of another in ALL use cases. Not sure you even comprehend this, though.

      --
      Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
  3. Disagree by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting

    I disagree. Wider disclosure of a vulnerability means a greater chance that it's leaked to those who would exploit it for malicious purposes. There are lots of operating systems that run on the 32 and 64 bit AMD/Intel architecture. Should every single OS developer be notified of the vulnerability? Alternatively, notify those who have the largest user base, while trying to limit the disclosure. There is no perfect solution, but I favor limited disclosure. Frankly, OpenBSD just isn't that widely used, and if there were more users, they probably would have been notified ahead of the public disclosure.

    Yes, Intel has tried to conflate Spectre and Meltdown to avoid negative PR. That is a legitimate criticism, but one that's not at all new. Otherwise, it's a lot of butthurt because OpenBSD just doesn't have that many users, and therefore wasn't notified.

    1. Re:Disagree by whizzter · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Also it might be possible that he was intentionally left out due to trust issues after patching the Krack attack and thus disclosing info about it prematurely.

    2. Re:Disagree by TheRaven64 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That doesn't explain why FreeBSD wasn't notified until 5-6 months after Intel and ARM knew about the issue and until after Apple had shipped a patch. It also wasn't helped that there was no real coordination in releases. Apple shipped a binary update and there were patches in the Linux tree containing mitigation before the official end of the embargo period.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    3. Re:Disagree by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Should every single OS developer be notified of the vulnerability?

      Yes

      Next question.

    4. Re:Disagree by Hal_Porter · · Score: 1

      Yeah, that pissed a lot of people off.

      --
      echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
    5. Re: Disagree by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Okay, just to be clear, that includes every OS, from Windows to TempleOS. If I fork the Linux kernel and release my own modified kernel under the GPL, that should entitle me to advance notifications, too. That seems like a security risk to me.

    6. Re:Disagree by Zocalo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Sure it does. If you want to keep something quiet until you are ready to announce it, then you DO NOT tell any of the people who have a track record of spilling the beans. Regardless of where you personally stand on the idea of embargos and standing up for principles, Theo refused to go along with an embargo previously and it was quite likely that he wouldn't do so this time either. Google's Project Zero team presumably had discussions with Intel and select others they felt they could trust about what was required to address the problem and how long it would take, and that group collectively agreed on the original release date of January 9th, plus who else to notify and when. Clearly that larger group did not include anyone in the BSD camp.

      Standing up for your principles can have a cost attached, and I suspect we've just seen what that was for Theo and the BSD developers.

      --
      UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
    7. Re:Disagree by thegarbz · · Score: 2

      It also wasn't helped that there was no real coordination in releases.

      There was, the problem is exactly what they were trying to avoid. It was under non-disclosure back in November. The actual full disclosure date wasn't supposed to be until tomorrow (9th Jan) so coordinated releases could take place. Unfortunately someone jumped the gun and we're left with the clusterfuck that this has become (Microsoft patches released, Apple patches released, UEFI patches not ready yet, Linux patches scheduled for original date).

      This one of the very few downsides of Opensource. It's difficult to release bug information under NDA as efforts to patch the bugs result in the bug being revealed. That and Theo shat the bed with his past irresponsible patching of a bug early that was covered under a coordinated release schedule.

      Secrets are only kept when few people know about them.

    8. Re:Disagree by complete+loony · · Score: 4, Informative
      He's just bitter because he got slapped on the wrist last time.

      Why did OpenBSD silently release a patch before the embargo?

      OpenBSD announced an errata on 30 August 2017 that silently prevented our key reinstallation attacks. More specifically, patches were released for both OpenBSD 6.0 and OpenBSD 6.1.

      We notified OpenBSD of the vulnerability on 15 July 2017, before CERT/CC was involved in the coordination. Quite quickly, Theo de Raadt replied and critiqued the tentative disclosure deadline: “In the open source world, if a person writes a diff and has to sit on it for a month, that is very discouraging”. Note that I wrote and included a suggested diff for OpenBSD already, and that at the time the tentative disclosure deadline was around the end of August. As a compromise, I allowed them to silently patch the vulnerability. In hindsight this was a bad decision, since others might rediscover the vulnerability by inspecting their silent patch. To avoid this problem in the future, OpenBSD will now receive vulnerability notifications closer to the end of an embargo.

      --
      09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
    9. Re:Disagree by Freultwah · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You do realise that OpenBSD and FreeBSD are two different entities, right?

    10. Re:Disagree by TheRaven64 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Sure it does. If you want to keep something quiet until you are ready to announce it, then you DO NOT tell any of the people who have a track record of spilling the beans.

      When has FreeBSD ever disclosed a security vulnerability under embargo? FreeBSD has a security officer and a secteam group that are the only ones that have access to any embargoed security information and have separate infrastructure from the rest of the project for preparing fixes. Only people who have signed the relevant NDAs are allowed access to anything shared with this group and they are normally given information about embargoed security issues as a result.

      Regardless of where you personally stand on the idea of embargos and standing up for principles, Theo refused to go along with an embargo previously and it was quite likely that he wouldn't do so this time either

      You do realise that FreeBSD and OpenBSD are entirely different projects, run by different people, with different infrastructure and different codebases and that Theo De Raadt has no connection to the FreeBSD project?

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    11. Re:Disagree by mlw4428 · · Score: 1, Troll

      Because it's FreeBSD. They're not a real player and they can be butthurt, but gosh darn it I rolled my own experimental kernel and I sure wasn't notified either.

    12. Re:Disagree by orlanz · · Score: 2

      Wider disclosure of a vulnerability means a greater chance that it's leaked to those who would exploit it for malicious purposes.

      This has a very poor underlying assumption: White hats always know about exploits prior to Black hats. Considering the latter are far better funded, have better incentives, and don't disclose; I think the betting is that it is already used for malicious purposes.

      Additionally, this is the information age, not the dead tree, secret squirrel, stamped "for your eyes only" days. In this age, does it really matter if 100 or 10000 people know a confidential piece of information? You only need ONE individual in that set to provide the information to malicious actors. Additionally, there are a multitude of incentives and multitude of avenues for sharing with little chance of getting caught.

      Given the above, full disclosure is far better than limited disclosure.

      Also, due to the nature of the BSD license, it's code is in a ton of software around the world. The assumption that it isn't widely used is wishful thinking of the unknown.

    13. Re: Disagree by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Diversity officers, codes of conduct and freebsd girl. I mean, what isn't to like?

    14. Re:Disagree by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So theoretically, for Spectre, favoring the limited disclosure would mean that Android >>Linux kernel should be the first to get informed about the vulnerability from ARM/Intel/Project Zero due to them having the largest user base?

    15. Re:Disagree by Zocalo · · Score: 2

      Yes, I do realise that - but it doesn't change the situation that *all* the BSD devs were kept out of the loop regardless of which family they work on. If you consider that there is still a lot of overlap between the two teams in terms of the code and contributors, then it would be kind of hard for FreeBSD to be making changes and testing them - especially if they wanted to roll them out publically like Linux did - without at least some of the OpenBSD devs either being in the loop or figuring out that something was up - and that then becomes a risk of premature and uncontrolled disclosure. Yes, it's possible that the FreeBSD security team could have kept everything under wraps, but from Google's point of view that's not the question they would have been considering; they'd have been considering how likely it was each potential insider was to result in a breach of the embargo. We now know FreeBSD wasn't in the loop, and we have to think they might consider that Theo might be a problem for maintaining the embargo, so regardless of whether they just treated all of BSD as a single entity or that the "Chinese walls" between the two teams wouldn't be strong enough, the end result is the same - a lot of BSD users, in all families, in a race to secure systems before the exploits hit.

      --
      UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
    16. Re:Disagree by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Read the answer again, the author allowed the OpenBSD developers to silently patch the vulnerability... and then blames them because someone discovered it.

    17. Re: Disagree by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ok, every OS with an install base of more than 1000

    18. Re:Disagree by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nobody uses FreeBSD except graying hobby types. Talk about hubris! Why didn't Intel notify Speak 'N' Spell? LOL.

    19. Re:Disagree by complete+loony · · Score: 2

      With a vulnerability disclosure of that scale, I can forgive a researcher for making a poor decision. Maybe you spend months to years bug hunting and make one discovery.

      But someone who deals with a near constant stream of high severity bugs, should take a more considered position.

      --
      09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
    20. Re: Disagree by dave420 · · Score: 1

      According to whom?

    21. Re:Disagree by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      You do realise that OpenBSD and FreeBSD are two different entities, right?

      You do realise there's more in common between them than what sets them apart, including a lot of sharing between developers.

    22. Re:Disagree by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's OpenBSD, damnit!

      I am saddened that every single post about this OpenBSD case got modded up - people are idiots.

    23. Re: Disagree by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hurrrr hurrrr you so funnnnny!!!

      To bad you know nothing about FreeBSD or computers. Bsd family OSs run on a shit ton of hardware. I'd wager a lot of data centers use them as well for certain task, including security.

    24. Re: Disagree by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're moving the goalpost Dave ;)

    25. Re:Disagree by Bongo · · Score: 1

      That’s what I was wondering too. Seems too easy for it to leak, whilst most everyone who is actually affected is kept in the dark.

      My takeaway message, for me, is that, any secret key or whatever, on a machine which ran newly downloaded and possibly untrusted code, now needs recreating on a fresh system. And it would have been nice to have known that months ago, even if no fix was available.

      This is like the old days where the doctor doesn’t inform you of terminal illness, because they think they’re better judge of how to manage you.

  4. Indeed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Disclsoure is incredibly bad.

  5. Counterpoint. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It only took 1 more second to add architect@FreeBSD.org in the CC box. It wasnâ(TM)t hard to do.

  6. Lot of speculation in his dire statement by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    While I agree the whole thing was handled badly, in fact it was The Register who was going to print the story long before Intel, Google or anyone wanted them too. This sort of threat required more secrecy and unfortunately The Register exposed it long before fixes were really ready. Moore's Law seems to be the big culprit in this as the chip makers ran up against a brick wall in terms of core speed. I don't agree that Intel knew the risk and not even sure given the exposure time without a exploit has been a big risk. Over a decade and no attack against this? No a huge risk to me. Sadly the hype and anger against Intel is unfounded and Intel is not alone in using this design and I am sure other chip makers saw it as a good way to increase speed.

    1. Re:Lot of speculation in his dire statement by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      > Over a decade and no attack against this?

      Correction: there's no public knowledge of anyone exploiting this vulnerability. You have no way to know if you got done on AWS or not: exploiting this leaves no fingerprints.

    2. Re:Lot of speculation in his dire statement by segedunum · · Score: 1

      If The Register hadn't kicked Intel then the narrative Intel wanted to spin would have prevailed.

    3. Re:Lot of speculation in his dire statement by sjames · · Score: 2

      Risk isn't just a matter of how likely the discovery is, but how serious it is and how widespread the negative impact is. Given that Meltdown affects a huge population, even a tiny chance of discovery represents a huge risk, Intel doesn't want to do a recall since even chipzilla would be sunk by the cost. There's a big risk for you. Next time you consider Intel, just remember, you bought intel before and right now they're pointing at you and saying "HA-HA".

      Care to spin the wheel again?

  7. Re:"I bet they were instructed to ignore the risk" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yeah the computer industry is totally different from the automotive industry.

  8. Re:"I bet they were instructed to ignore the risk" by lucasnate1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Funny, both me and my friend worked at companies where we were told to ignore risk. Why would intel be different?

  9. Re:Typical by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    +1.

    Sounds like Theo is channeling his inner Donald Trump.

    However...

    Both FreeBSD *AND* NetBSD knew about the bug before it was public knowledge. If OpenBSD didn't know then ...

  10. He and Linus are Spot On by segedunum · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This has been extremely worrying. What's more worrying are the number of 'security researchers' regurgitating Intel's bullshit verbatim. We have yet to fully see the fallout from this.

    He's also dead right in that Intel has been mixing up the two issues, Meltdown and Spectre, deliberately, so they could tell everyone that it wasn't just Intel that was affected, and they also gave the impression that Spectre had been fixed when it was Meltdown that had been mitigated - with a patch that creates unacceptable performance problems, to a lesser or a greater extent.

    Yes, all processor manufacturers are affected by Spectre, but it is Intel that is mostly affected because they implemented speculative loads badly without much attempt at segregation. They've also attempted to pass this off as 'historical architectural decisions we can do nothing about, but it is working as designed'.

    1. Re:He and Linus are Spot On by OneAhead · · Score: 4, Informative

      He's also dead right in that Intel has been mixing up the two issues, Meltdown and Spectre, deliberately, so they could tell everyone that it wasn't just Intel that was affected, and they also gave the impression that Spectre had been fixed when it was Meltdown that had been mitigated - with a patch that creates unacceptable performance problems, to a lesser or a greater extent.

      This, in spades. While Theo De Raadt is not my favorite IT personality, the mixing together of the issues (actually 3 of them!) has made it exceedingly hard for someone who isn't familiar with the inner working of modern CPU architectures to get the story straight, and Mr. De Raadt gets kudos for calling them out on it.

      The following is what I could infer from what I found online. I'm almost certain a good portion of it is WRONG, and I hope the more knowledgeable part of the /. crowd will help me out by correcting it. (No, I'm not being lazy - just stretched to the limit of my understanding of the primary sources, yet desperate to gain some working understanding beyond the "it's hard to explain but you should apply patches" advice found everywhere on the internet.)

      • There are three separate but somewhat related issues:
        • Variant 1: bounds check bypass (CVE-2017-5753)
        • Variant 2: branch target injection (CVE-2017-5715)
        • Variant 3: rogue data cache load (CVE-2017-5754)
      • Variant 3 is a true bug by any definition. It was named "meltdown" and is an Intel exclusive - AMD and ARM are not affected. If an attacker succeeds to run a malicious binary on an affected system, they can read kernel memory, including juicy secrets like passwords and decription keys. To put this into perspective, this is very nearly as bad as a local privilege escalation. And to put that into perspective, local privilege escalations are so common that there's a mantra in security: if a sufficiently skilled adversary gains "arbitrary code execution", it's virtually "game over" and you can go scrub your HDD. Nevertheless, the aforementioned "sufficiently skilled" bar lies quite high and may not be met by a lot of common threats (especially the automated ones). So, from a defense-in-depth perspective, the only sane advise is "patch your system now". The big news is that patching will come with a performance impact that is proportional with how frequently a process calls the kernel. A process that simply allocates a big chunk of memory, loads data into it, and starts chewing on that (think stuff like compression, crypto mining, scientific computation,...) will not feel much impact, while databases generally will.
      • Variant 1, IF I understand correctly, allows an attacker to feed a non-buggy process carefully crafted input that tricks it into leaking data into memory space that is owned by the process in question, but not in use by it. The bad news here is that all CPUs (including AMD and ARM) are vulnerable and there's no way to patch it system-wide. One could argue that this is not a huge deal in and by itself because if the process and the system have no other bugs, the data could never be retrieved. However, it is apparently possible on certain browsers to make JavaScript read data from the "not-in-use" memory locations (which would be a feature for a "system" language like C, but I would classify it as a bug for a high-level interpreted language such as JavaScript). Given that a browser handles sensitive data (passwords), this is potentially devastating. Fortunately, it is easily mitigated by the fact that the leaked data doesn't live long by virtue of it physically only residing in the CPU cache and not the actual memory. The attack therefore relies on precise timing, and by decreasing the precision of the timing mechanisms that are available in JavaScript, browser manufacturers can put a stopgap into th
    2. Re:He and Linus are Spot On by Lothsahn · · Score: 5, Informative

      Thank you for noting that you're not 100% sure it's right, and for the excellent summary. There's a ton of misinformation going around, especially with 0100010001010011 dude on Slashdot repeatedly posting that Meltdown is INTEL ONLY, which is false, as some ARM products are affected. What is true is that Meltdown does not affect AMD and affects only a few of ARM's processors.

      As you state, it's important to rely on the original sources. Here is each CPU vendor's response to the security issues:
      https://www.amd.com/en/corpora...
      https://www.intel.com/content/...
      https://developer.arm.com/supp...

      Here are two corrections to make:
      1) Meltdown:
      One of your bold statements "AMD and ARM are not affected" is untrue. See here, from ARM directly:
      https://developer.arm.com/supp...

      ARM has confirmed that A75 is vulnerable to Meltdown. In addition, A15, A57, and A72 are vulnerable to a variant of Meltdown (Variant 3a) which ARM has added. ARM has stated that they believe this variant is NOT exploitable, however, there is already userspace code out there that can do some limited exploits:
      https://github.com/lgeek/spec_...

      AMD is not affected by Meltdown, in any form. From AMD's press release:
      https://www.amd.com/en/corpora...

      2) Variant 1: While other vendors may require application changes to address this issue, AMD appears to be able to address this with an OS update, based on their post:
      https://www.amd.com/en/corpora...


      Summary:
      Variant 1: Some manufacturers (ARM) appear to not be able to fix it and are recommending compiler changes, but AMD will fix this in OS updates. Unclear how Intel is addressing this vulnerability.
      Variant 2: Correct, from what I can tell.
      Variant 3 (Meltdown): Affects nearly all Intel (within the last 10 years) and ARM A75 chips. AMD not affected.
      Variant 3a (Modified Meltdown): Affects a larger set of high performance ARM chips

      Finally, Intel has done a terrible job (intentionally?) at conflating the two issues, which is unfair. These are 3 separate security issues, with their own priorities and impacts. If you read Intel's official press release for this issue, there's no differentiation between variants 1-3, like there is for AMD and ARM:
      https://www.intel.com/content/...

      --
      -=Lothsahn=-
    3. Re:He and Linus are Spot On by complete+loony · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I skimmed both papers, and that seems to about sum it up. Though I would add that all three attacks cause speculative execution of a construction like; "x = array[ *pointer ];", to push memory from an array into or out of cache based on the data loaded from the victim pointer. So combining the announcement does make some sense, as the details of any of those variants might point people to rediscovering the others.

      I was impressed with the work put into variant 2. Tricking the CPU branch predictor into running ROP-like gadgets within a higher privileged process, then using cache access timing to work out what happened. It almost sounds like bad sci-fi dialog, yet they actually did it. And yes, the attack complexity sounds comparable to similar ROP stack smashing exploits.

      Variant 2 is being patched in compilers. Both gcc and clang are working on patches (that might already be released?) that avoid any speculative execution of indirect branching. Using a trick documented by google to patch the stack with the destination address, and then return. So now we just have to recompile *everything* that has access to privileged / sensitive memory contents to hopefully prevent attackers doing anything useful with branch poisoning. Of course there will be a performance hit, as no indirect branches can be correctly predicted.

      Personally I would say that the problem with variant 2 is sharing the branch predictor between domains. Branches taken in one process, influence how branches in other processes are predicted. I can understand that in a modern OS, multiple processes end up running the same library code, so this may have been a deliberate decision. But, if these tables were stored per-thread and context switched, this problem would probably have never been exploitable.

      The Spectre paper did suggest that they had found some evidence of something like variant 2 on an AMD CPU. But I believe that the inner workings of AMD's branch predictor are not as easily deduced as Intel's. So the researchers took the easiest route and attacked 3 different Intel cores instead. That doesn't mean that nobody will ever work out how to pull off an attack though.

      --
      09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
    4. Re:He and Linus are Spot On by OneAhead · · Score: 1

      Thanks a lot for the reviewing and corrections! I hope not only I but the /. community at large will get some benefit out of this exercise.

      I guess I did get a bit lazy with verifying statements about ARM. Also, I'm surprised on a somewhat more fundamental level that it's so badly affected, so some confirmation bias might have been at play. If a lot of the same issues turn up in a completely different architecture, then Intel's "hard-to-foresee consequences of logical design decisions" attitude might have some merit after all.

      Though that doesn't excuse their "conflation smoke screen". They deserve the class action lawsuit for that alone.

    5. Re:He and Linus are Spot On by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The ARM A75 is not released yet. Sure, ARM would lose money since they now cannot sell it, but nobody actually has one.

    6. Re:He and Linus are Spot On by OneAhead · · Score: 1

      Variant 2 is being patched in compilers. Both gcc and clang are working on patches (that might already be released?) that avoid any speculative execution of indirect branching. Using a trick documented by google to patch the stack with the destination address, and then return. So now we just have to recompile *everything* that has access to privileged / sensitive memory contents to hopefully prevent attackers doing anything useful with branch poisoning. Of course there will be a performance hit, as no indirect branches can be correctly predicted.

      Interesting! Thank you for the additional info.

    7. Re:He and Linus are Spot On by Lothsahn · · Score: 1

      That's good to note. I wasn't aware that no A75 hardware has yet shipped.

      That said, the design was finalized and released in May of last year... so something will have to be done by anyone implementing it if that hardware is running untrusted code.

      --
      -=Lothsahn=-
    8. Re:He and Linus are Spot On by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

      WRONG. Meltdown is INTEL ONLY. The A75 isn't even on the market yet. Keep the message simple: MELTDOWN IS INTEL ONLY.

    9. Re:He and Linus are Spot On by 110010001000 · · Score: 0

      So you are misinformed, not me. Glad you admitted it. Meltdown is INTEL ONLY.

    10. Re:He and Linus are Spot On by Lothsahn · · Score: 1

      Snapdragon 845 is scheduled to release this year. It will have the Meltdown flaw and it won't be Intel. Grow up.

      --
      -=Lothsahn=-
    11. Re:He and Linus are Spot On by Lothsahn · · Score: 1

      Snapdragon 845 is scheduled to release this year. It will have the Meltdown flaw and it won't be Intel. I know you have a emotional desire to repeat that meltdown is Intel only, but it's not. Grow up.

      --
      -=Lothsahn=-
    12. Re:He and Linus are Spot On by complete+loony · · Score: 1

      Browsing llvm/clang's mailing list, I also found that variant 1 is getting a compiler work around. Though this requires opt-in from each vulnerable call site.

      --
      09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
    13. Re:He and Linus are Spot On by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How can you be certain Meltdown is Intel only when IBM has not explicitly stated which CVE or mulitple CVEs affect POWER CPUs? They are releasing firmware, AIX, and Linux updates to address at least one issue. IBM doesn't release POWER firmware and AIX updates just for fun.

    14. Re:He and Linus are Spot On by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

      Meltdown is Intel only. No other released processor has this flaw. Grow up.

    15. Re:He and Linus are Spot On by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

      Meltdown is Intel only. No other released processor has this flaw. Grow up.

    16. Re:He and Linus are Spot On by Agripa · · Score: 1

      Note that AMD is far from innocent in this respect - just remember how they skilfully downplayed their infamous TLB errata.

      I might suspect that their Phenom TLB problem had a connection with not speculating invalid loads but apparently their earlier processors did not suffer from this problem either.

  11. A W S by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    On january 4. I noticed a sudden change in our systems running in AWS. I have set some scaling factors that suddenly started kicking in without any visible changes in traffic pattern or userbase. It turns out our EC2 instances have seen a 50% inrease in idle load, that is quite significant!

    Allthough it is only from 20% load to 30% I will still claim significant being idle load.

    captcha: banally

  12. Correction needed by fubarrr · · Score: 5, Informative

    >is hard to believe they ignored the risky aspects. I bet they were instructed to ignore the risk

    The specific issue that Pentium line CPUs: a) do privilege check asynchronously; b) do it only for the "winning" execution branch was very well known among CPU design community.

    Intel architects even bragged about that as their "innovation" in industry journals and filled a number of patents for that (this is the reason amd privilege checker runs on all branches)

    1. Re:Correction needed by TheRaven64 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      And when Intel did this, everyone was happy that the cost of system calls went down. Now everyone is saying that they secretly knew that it was a security issue and only an idiot would have implemented it.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    2. Re:Correction needed by msgmonkey · · Score: 1

      System calls where always slow because they used to be called via a software interrupt call.

      SYSCALL is an in x64 instruction that speeds this up, introduced by AMD.

      Speculative execution predates SYSCALL by about 5 years.

      System calls are now slower because the kernel memory now has to be mapped and unmapped when the system call enters/leaves rather than be mapped all the time. This has to be done because memory that was marked as privledged can now be accessed by user programs i.e. memory protection no longer works and the only fix for the problem is to unmap the memory.

      Speculative execution does n't mean we have have this problem, AMD managed to do it fine. No one can say this is by design, if it is by design then it should be documented since 1995 that the MMU protection can be bypassed.

    3. Re:Correction needed by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 1

      That sounds like a potentially risky but not wholly inreasonable approach. The risk is that the process gains access to the results of a "losing" branch, either directly by using some exploit, or indirectly by using some weird timing attack or whatever. Isn't the real issue that such an attack turns out to be feasible?

      --
      If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
    4. Re:Correction needed by TheRaven64 · · Score: 4, Informative

      System calls where always slow because they used to be called via a software interrupt call.

      And software interrupts were slow because they were not considered branches by early branch predictors and so triggered a complete pipeline flush equivalent to a branch mispredict (followed immediately by another branch, which SYSCALL removed). Intel addressed this by treating software interrupts as normal branches for the branch predictor, with an extra hint that they changed privilege level. This gave a small improvement to the Pentium, but was a huge boost on the Pentium 4, where the pipelines were long and deep enough that they had up to 140 instructions in flight at a time and having to flush all of those for a system call was painful.

      Speculative execution does n't mean we have have this problem, AMD managed to do it fine. No one can say this is by design, if it is by design then it should be documented since 1995 that the MMU protection can be bypassed.

      Speculative execution across ring changes is the root cause of this. AMD doesn't do this because Intel patented it, told AMD, and didn't include it in their cross-licensing agreement. You can bet that AMD was just waiting for the patent to expire before doing it, because without it you have to wait until all branches up to the system call have been retired before you can perform the transition. The MMU protection isn't bypassed, because the instructions that would be bypassing the MMU protection are cancelled. There is a side channel that allows you use the changes in cache behaviour to determine what the values in memory would have been.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    5. Re:Correction needed by squiggleslash · · Score: 1

      If everyone knew it from the beginning, why has it taken 22-23 years for someone in the CPU design community to let software developers know there's this massive security hole?

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    6. Re:Correction needed by fubarrr · · Score: 1

      Oh, so not only me remembers patent war over software interrupts branch prediction. How old r u man?

    7. Re:Correction needed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Everything you say may be true, but it doesn't actually matter. "Everyone" isn't responsible for Intel's products. Intel is responsible. None of the two-faced double talking strawmen you cite took the profits. Intel did.

    8. Re:Correction needed by NFN_NLN · · Score: 1

      Look at his user_id. Probably University in mid to late 90s.

    9. Re:Correction needed by TheRaven64 · · Score: 1

      If vendors are responsible for classes of vulnerabilities that are discovered years after they ship their product then we're going to have a very fun few years, before all computer vendors go out of business.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    10. Re:Correction needed by Dast · · Score: 1

      You kids get off my lawn!

      --

      This sig is false.

    11. Re:Correction needed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Speculative execution across ring changes is the root cause of this. AMD doesn't do this because Intel patented it, told AMD, and didn't include it in their cross-licensing agreement. You can bet that AMD was just waiting for the patent to expire before doing it, because without it you have to wait until all branches up to the system call have been retired before you can perform the transition.

      So Intel showed AMD the gun, wouldn't let AMD touch the gun, then shot themselves in the foot with it.

    12. Re: Correction needed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This isn't your lawn no more old man. Comcast eminent domained it for the good of the public. Enjoy those hipsters and wires ;) /sarc

    13. Re:Correction needed by Agripa · · Score: 1

      The specific issue that Pentium line CPUs: a) do privilege check asynchronously; b) do it only for the "winning" execution branch was very well known among CPU design community.

      Intel architects even bragged about that as their "innovation" in industry journals and filled a number of patents for that (this is the reason amd privilege checker runs on all branches)

      AMD checks permissions on every TLB access while Intel delays the permission check (or result) until instruction retirement which is when faults are acted on. It does not make any sense to act on a fault on a speculated branch until the branch is resolved.

      Since AMD never does the speculated load, there is no data for the speculated branch to use making them immune to Meltdown. The speculated instructions past the load never get executed.

      I do not understand why Intel's method would be any faster. Reloading TLBs and doing housekeeping for privilege changes are a separate issue.

    14. Re:Correction needed by Agripa · · Score: 1

      And when Intel did this, everyone was happy that the cost of system calls went down. Now everyone is saying that they secretly knew that it was a security issue and only an idiot would have implemented it.

      Checking TLB permissions during speculation as AMD does has nothing to do with system calls.

    15. Re:Correction needed by Agripa · · Score: 1

      Speculative execution across ring changes is the root cause of this. AMD doesn't do this because Intel patented it, told AMD, and didn't include it in their cross-licensing agreement.

      AMD does not do this because they check TLB permissions on speculative loads instead of waiting until instruction retirement. The speculation still happens up until the load.

      The MMU protection isn't bypassed, because the instructions that would be bypassing the MMU protection are cancelled.

      And AMD just never speculates the instructions which would cause a protection fault until the branch is resolved.

      Thinking about it now, this *is* slower by a tiny bit but fixing it with address isolation is massively slower.

      You can bet that AMD was just waiting for the patent to expire before doing it, because without it you have to wait until all branches up to the system call have been retired before you can perform the transition.

      I read that AMD has a patent for checking the permissions during the speculative load but I do not know why this would not be part of their cross licensing agreement with Intel. Apparently this goes back to the Opteron.

  13. Core issue is trust by eyepeepackets · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Intel makes a monumental decision to benefit the short-term interest of their corporation at the long-term expense of their customers, then tries to weasel out of a equitable fix for their customers? It's not only their product that can't be trusted, it's their judgement at all levels. Heads need to roll at Intel for this....

    --
    Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
    1. Re:Core issue is trust by nanoflower · · Score: 3, Interesting

      It was also a short and long term benefit of their customers. Are you willing to pay Intel back for the extra performance they provided by their same decision that you are deriding today?

    2. Re:Core issue is trust by Christian+Smith · · Score: 4, Informative

      It was also a short and long term benefit of their customers. Are you willing to pay Intel back for the extra performance they provided by their same decision that you are deriding today?

      Eh? We've already paid the Intel for the performance. Intel CPUs are that bit more expensive than equivalent AMD CPUs, performance is why they commanded the price premium.

      Customers trusted Intel that the performance was gained with no cost to security, a reasonable assumption. I'm computer literate, and I'm shocked that this can even be an issue. How the hell do speculative memory accesses leak through kernel memory protection?

      So I'm not sure what you think is to be paid back.

    3. Re:Core issue is trust by Zontar_Thing_From_Ve · · Score: 2

      Intel makes a monumental decision to benefit the short-term interest of their corporation at the long-term expense of their customers, then tries to weasel out of a equitable fix for their customers? It's not only their product that can't be trusted, it's their judgement at all levels. Heads need to roll at Intel for this....

      Intel's stock price is down about $2 US since this became known, so I don't think I'd bet much on heads rolling. The problem is that most of the world is not IT geeks and for those non-iT people, many of them are scared of AMD. They know nothing about CPUs, so to them Intel is the safe choice because only Intel advertises on TV. Oddly, this may actually increase their fear of AMD because, as pointed out, Intel has managed to convince everybody that all CPUs have both problems so non-IT people are likely to think that Intel will probably fix it quickly and who knows when those weird "other companies" will do so.

    4. Re:Core issue is trust by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh my god, did you *really* just say "computer literate" in 2018!

      Anyone else triggered by this anymore? Can't stand hearing people say that.

    5. Re:Core issue is trust by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It was also a short and long term benefit of their customers. Are you willing to pay Intel back for the extra performance they provided by their same decision that you are deriding today?

      why would he/she pay intel back for the extra performance they provided??? we already paid extra, now the performance will be less. intel should pay US for the performance we paid for, which will be taken away with these patches/mitigation strategies. dumbass.

    6. Re:Core issue is trust by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Customers trusted Intel that the performance was gained with no cost to security, a reasonable assumption.

      I can't believe that anyone who has been around computers for a few years, would really think that. Everyone knows that the computer world is a house of cards held together with spit and duct tape, and that with every passing week we are rolling the dice on whether or not a major disaster happens.

      This Meltdown thing is bad, and when you look at the details of how it works, it's surprising. But that something of this magnitude happened, was not even slightly surprising. Everyone expects everything to come crashing down; we just don't know when or how.

    7. Re:Core issue is trust by Christian+Smith · · Score: 1

      Oh my god, did you *really* just say "computer literate" in 2018!

      Anyone else triggered by this anymore? Can't stand hearing people say that.

      Sorry, perhaps I should have said computer science literate? As in, I know how computers work, not just how to use them.

  14. Dream on by sjbe · · Score: 4, Interesting

    "It is a scandal, and I want repaired processors for free."

    And I want a pet unicorn. Come to think of it, unicorns are about as real a thing as a "repaired processor" since they physically cannot be repaired. He wants a replacement processor which almost certainly is never going to happen. Basically he's asking for every processor produced in the last 20 years to be replaced for free. If you think that's realistic I've got a bridge to sell you.

    There will be plenty of legal action over this and the results of that will be the full extend of any compensation. Furthermore to get compensation he will have to show actual harm incurred. Simple fact is that at least so far there has been little to no tangible harm from this problem to date so standing will be an issue for anyone who sues. This might change in the coming months/years but until it does the chip makers aren't going to pay a dime to replace anyone's chip - flawed or otherwise.

    1. Re:Dream on by geekmux · · Score: 1

      "It is a scandal, and I want repaired processors for free."

      And I want a pet unicorn. Come to think of it, unicorns are about as real a thing as a "repaired processor" since they physically cannot be repaired. He wants a replacement processor which almost certainly is never going to happen. Basically he's asking for every processor produced in the last 20 years to be replaced for free. If you think that's realistic I've got a bridge to sell you.

      Ironically, it is realistic for one obvious reason; consumers are fucking lazy.

      When you look at the actual affected processors vs. the number of people who will actually get off their ass and make a claim to have a processor replaced for free, it becomes very clear how affordable this really is. People are lazy, and don't give a shit. 75% of consumers won't even know or understand what the fuck "Meltdown" is a month from now, no matter how many times it's broken down in laymans terms on the evening news and morning talk shows. Two months from now 95% of people will have forgotten about it.

    2. Re:Dream on by sjames · · Score: 1

      Everyone running an intel CPU will suddenly discover that they have 5-30% less processor than they paid for. In many cases, that difference would have resulted in going with the AMD processor. That is a real economic harm that deserves compensation.

      That doesn't mean justice will be done, the courts often bend over backwards and grab their ankles for large corporations, but morally and ethically, Intel owes a lot of people a pile of cash.

    3. Re:Dream on by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 2

      Replacing the CPU on on one host often puts every system in the rack at risk. Most household systems can stand a loss of a few % of performance with a patched kernel. Server rooms filled with racks and blades, such as a major data center hosts, can mean unscrambling rats' nests of cabling to extract a host, opening it up, edging blocking components out of the way, releasing the heat sinks, replacing the CPU, _replacing the thermal paste_, and re-attaching the heat sink, closing the system up, and testing it. Much like taking your car in for an oil change, this creates a real risk of making mistakes and requiring additional effort or replacement parts. It also creates a risk of failures in the weeks after the CPU replacement, especially if the installer mishandles the thermal paste.

      The risk is compounded in environments with poorly configured cabling, such as those shone here: https://www.cepro.com/photo/th...

      Completely halting and then cold booting servers is not a zero risk operation. Hosts, or arrays, that have been stable for years will fail to reboot and may even be unrecoverable in an environment where systems are not rebooted regularly and discovered earlier. Mechanical parts, such as fans, and spinning hard drives, are most likely to fail during such a restart. Old clock batteries can expire and fail to set time properly on reboot, old power supplies can fall out of spec and fail to handle start-up voltage requirements, the list of potential problems is extensive.

      Replacing CPU's in a production environment can be as great a risk as the security issues of these Intel bugs.

    4. Re:Dream on by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Simple fact is that at least so far there has been little to no tangible harm from this problem to date so standing will be an issue for anyone who sues.

      If the performance hit from the Meltdown fix is X%, then a customer has effectively lost X% of a processor. That's tangible harm, and could be redressed by, say, an X% refund on the processor's purchase price.

    5. Re:Dream on by supremebob · · Score: 1

      I wonder how many people actually requested a replacement processor from Intel back when they had a recalled the FDIV bug, and how many of those users actually replaced their processor once they got it. Are there any numbers out there on that? Replacing a CPU is a pain in the ass, so I wonder how many people went through the effort to do it.

    6. Re:Dream on by Scarred+Intellect · · Score: 1

      He wants a replacement processor which almost certainly is never going to happen. Basically he's asking for every processor produced in the last 20 years to be replaced for free. If you think that's realistic I've got a bridge to sell you.

      How is this different (aside from magnitude/number of units sold) from Takata's airbag recall? I wasn't affected by an exploding airbag, but I still get new airbags in my Dodge. Interestingly, it's apparently still going on

      I suspect a recall this large would bankrupt Intel, much like the airbag recall is bankrupting Takata. We've seen our automakers get bailed out because they were deemed "too big to fail", but maybe Intel failing could be a good thing (though I don't know of anyone that can simply step up to replace them).

    7. Re:Dream on by jareth-0205 · · Score: 2

      I mean replacing a CPU is a non-trivial task in a desktop, nevermind impossible for laptops which are the majority of purchases. And even if you could find someone else to do it you have to give up your device while they do, and you can bet that won't be a quick procedure.

      How many components of your car, or washing machine, boiler, oven have *you* considered replacing? Even if you know what components there are in there, and what flaws they might have? Would you even know what particular components are in your car's engine management unit, for example? Because that's how most people view computers - they bought a Dell, not an Intel.

      It's not "fucking lazy", it's "fucking have other shit to do, and don't have the technical expertise or time".

    8. Re:Dream on by Kythe · · Score: 1

      Don't be so sure Intel won't feel the need to make customers whole on this.

      It's a single data point, but an interesting one: Engaget's Facebook page posted yesterday about Intel's new processors with AMD graphics. Every single comment below the post asked why on Earth anyone would buy an Intel processor without any assurances the Meltdown/Spectre flaws were taken care of.

      The fallout hasn't even begun to really hit on this.

      --

      Kythe
    9. Re:Dream on by geekmux · · Score: 1

      I mean replacing a CPU is a non-trivial task in a desktop, nevermind impossible for laptops which are the majority of purchases. And even if you could find someone else to do it you have to give up your device while they do, and you can bet that won't be a quick procedure.

      How many components of your car, or washing machine, boiler, oven have *you* considered replacing? Even if you know what components there are in there, and what flaws they might have? Would you even know what particular components are in your car's engine management unit, for example? Because that's how most people view computers - they bought a Dell, not an Intel.

      It's not "fucking lazy", it's "fucking have other shit to do, and don't have the technical expertise or time".

      No, it's exactly what I said it is, and exactly what you confirmed yourself. Have "other shit to do" is the impatient crowd who demand everything in life be done quickly, so Intel can count on them not participating. Sadly, these are the same kind of people who hurt or kill themselves or others on the road because they were "too busy" to take their broken car off the road for a critical safety recall.

      And then there are those who wouldn't care how easy the fix is; if it requires any effort on their part, it's too much effort. Ironically, I have flashed car units before for aftermarket tunings, and I've followed the procedures sent to me when my washing machine was found to be faulty. My point is most wouldn't even bother to do anything, no matter how hard or easy it may be presented. I'm certain that in the past many vendors have been able to estimate the cost of a recall before even announcing it because of the impatient/don't-give-a-shit human factor.

    10. Re:Dream on by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Simple fact is that at least so far there has been little to no tangible harm from this problem to date so standing will be an issue for anyone who sues.

      If the performance hit from the Meltdown fix is X%, then a customer has effectively lost X% of a processor. That's tangible harm, and could be redressed by, say, an X% refund on the processor's purchase price.

      What will actually happen in the legal settlement is Intel will give away a few thousand wintel devices to some grade schools and if a customer can provide a verified purchase receipt for any products using affected Intel CPUs, a single one-time, time-limited, $25 credit towards the purchase of new Intel products will be issued (regardless of the actual number of defective products originally purchased). They will attempt to mitigate public anger by giving away free "Intel Inside" stickers.

      This strategy will meet with limited success.

    11. Re:Dream on by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not really. I have a sneaking suspicion that Intel will pressure both Linus and Microsoft to kneecap all cpu's per default, so everyone gets the impression there is no advantage in using anything but Intel.

      Evidence?
      cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep model -> AMD Ryzen 7 1700 Eight-Core Processor
      bugs : cpu_insecure

      Easily fixed by using "nopti", but who gains from me having to add that shit manually other than Intel?

    12. Re:Dream on by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Server rooms filled with racks and blades, such as a major data center hosts, can mean unscrambling rats' nests of cabling to extract a host, opening it up, edging blocking components out of the way, releasing the heat sinks, replacing the CPU, _replacing the thermal paste_, and re-attaching the heat sink, closing the system up, and testing it.

      Accumulating excuses for inaction is hardly a winning strategy.

      Completely halting and then cold booting servers is not a zero risk operation.

      Zero risk operations are the fantasy of fools guided by what they want to see.

      Hosts, or arrays, that have been stable for years will fail to reboot and may even be unrecoverable in an environment where systems are not rebooted regularly and discovered earlier. Mechanical parts, such as fans, and spinning hard drives, are most likely to fail during such a restart. Old clock batteries can expire and fail to set time properly on reboot, old power supplies can fall out of spec and fail to handle start-up voltage requirements, the list of potential problems is extensive.

      The whole F**** job of managing a datacenter boils down to managing risk.

      If you find yourself rightfully terrified of what might happen as a result of kicking over a few servers it seems to me you very much deserve what you get. You've already failed quite spectacularly at your job.

      Replacing CPU's in a production environment can be as great a risk as the security issues of these Intel bugs.

      Absolutely ridiculous. Who even thinks like this? What is wrong with you? Hardware is essentially free and administrative costs to migrate workloads don't hold a dimly lit candle to the cost of damage, PR, notification and lawyers. Get a grip on reality son.

    13. Re:Dream on by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Intel has made it clear, if you read between the lines in their flack pieces, that they feel no need to make anybody "whole" about this. As far as they're concerned, the processors are all working as designed, so there's nothing to fix. The firmware fixes they're doing are freebies for people who have something new enough to have some useful life to it (remembering that 5 years is the full depreciation period for most IT gear), but they feel that there's nothing broken. The class actions so far have very flaky bases and should be embarrassingly easy to kill for Intel's lawyers. I'd figure that you won't get any help if your computer is more than a year old (the typical warranty period), 2 at most. Throw it away and buy a new one. Maybe if you're a big corporation you might get Congress and IRS to allow early replacement as a casualty loss or maybe get some kind of depreciation bonus. Call it the Intel Tax for most of us, and the Intel Tax Break for corporations.

    14. Re:Dream on by Tom · · Score: 1

      Basically he's asking for every processor produced in the last 20 years to be replaced for free. If you think that's realistic I've got a bridge to sell you.

      It is not realistic, but it is right. They manufactured a defect product and sold it. There should be a recall and free repair, and if that's expensive or difficult - their problem not mine.

      Of course, in the real world their stock price already recovered, sales will be back to normal within a month, and by summer only some obscure computer geeks will talk about it. And maybe a bunch of lawyers trying to get rich on class action lawsuits.

      Furthermore to get compensation he will have to show actual harm incurred.

      With the patches being applied, your CPU now runs 10-30% slower. How is that not actual harm?

      --
      Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
    15. Re: Dream on by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't see how most would even notice. Considering how many users are currently infected with viruses/malware and are either part of botnets, or mining crypto-currency unknowingly for someone else, I'd say Intel is pretty safe in the long run. It's rather unfortunate. Hell, their press release trying to mix all of the vulnerabilities together was enough to make a person sick.

    16. Re:Dream on by sjames · · Score: 1

      Pretty standard behavior for Intel.

    17. Re: Dream on by sjames · · Score: 1

      However, those who will notice tend to have a LOT of CPUs made by Intel.

  15. Not only replaced. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    He wants Intel to redesign and fab up EVERY processor made in those years. Ainâ(TM)t gonna happen.

    1. Re:Not only replaced. by Anne+Thwacks · · Score: 1
      I want a pet Unicorn too, but I don't expect they will be free.

      All my Intel processors are out of warranty, and that must be true for a humongous number of people. Since my processors are out of warranty, I don't expect a free replacement - I expect a low cost replacement. The cost to me of replacing the machines would be huge, so I am happy to pay (say $50) for a plug in replacement that ups the performance to what can be achieved in the same socket with today's technology. There is no point in forcing Intel to re-engineer old architectures - that benefits no one.

      If Intel are not going to supply paid replacements at reasonable cost, then I expect them to be forced to supply for free all necessary info to anyone else who wishes to make and sell replacements to me on pain of jailing every single shareholder.

      If they are not willing to co-operate with their customers in producing an equitable fix, the whole lot of them are guilty of unjust enrichment, obtaining pecuniary advantage by deception, fraud, conspiracy to defraud, and anything else a bunch of greedy corporate lawyers can invent.

      If Intel goes bust as a result of this, we can expect the official receiver to sell off the patents to someone who will sell us cheaper and more reliable processors (probably not Cyrix).

      Intel need to be wetting their knickers at the very least.

      --
      Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
    2. Re:Not only replaced. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I don't expect a free replacement - I expect a low cost replacement

      You are definitely going to get neither, so start making your tantrum plans now. At most, you might get some money. That is the upper bound. You are not getting a socket-compatible replacement for any obsolete socket. 0.000% chance.

      If Intel are not going to supply paid replacements at reasonable cost, then I expect them to be forced to supply for free all necessary info to anyone else who wishes to make and sell replacements to me on pain of jailing every single shareholder.

      Your expectation will not be met, and nobody at Intel needs to have the slightest concern about jailtime. This is not a risk they are facing.

      If they are not willing to co-operate with their customers in producing an equitable fix, the whole lot of them are guilty of unjust enrichment,

      They are going to offer you something they call an equitable fix. You're simply going to dislike it. But their lawyers will outsmart you in court, because they are professional lawyers and you're just some random person who hasn't made his living working in liability law 8 hours per day for all his adult life. (C'mon, you gotta admit you're hopelessly outmatched in this regard.)

      The "equitable fix" might be nothing more than a software patch. But I think you may get more: some unsatisfying payment of money, at best, and there will be a well-formed (even if disagreeable) argument about how that payment was equitable. Their argument will be strong in court, based on the common practices of tens of thousands of liability cases over the last century, and ultimately, a judge will sign off on it. Your layman-lawyer opinion about the fairness is irrelevant, because from the judge's point of view, adults (i.e. lawyers) are talking, citing previous cases, citing laws, etc. Fairness is what people hope emerges from this system, but isn't mechanically part of that system.

      If you have a mobo with an obsolete socket, you will definitely be unhappy about that, because the cost of replacing that will not be a factor. That expense will be completely yours, and probably what you'll be most bitter about. But OTOH they'll say you can keep on using your old hardware, with software patches, getting a continuing value out of your processor. It will be less than 100% of the prior performance, but more than 0%.

      Intel need to be wetting their knickers at the very least.

      They are, just not to the degree that you're hoping.

  16. Re:"I bet they were instructed to ignore the risk" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Crock of shit, you mean like your own comment?

    To quote Linus "A *competent* CPU engineer would fix this by making sure speculation doesn't happen across protection domains." It's pretty bleeding obvious that either the Intel engineers are completely incompetent, or they were instructed to look the other way.

    There are no other alternatives. Linus says so, and now Theo too. Who are you, oh mighty commenter who knows better?

  17. Re: "I bet they were instructed to ignore the risk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yawn. Ankle grabber, STFU.

  18. Open hardware is going to be hard by sjbe · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Open Hardware doesn't fix problems in silicon that has already been manufactured. It might help with the next generation but it won't prevent bugs from appearing in the first place.

    Bear in mind that the reason Open Source software works so well is that the marginal cost of (re)production is close to zero and that there are (comparatively) minimal capital costs. Really you just need a PC and a lot of time. Open Hardware is a worthy goal but it's going to be a LOT trickier to pull off in the real world for mostly economic reasons. Furthermore hardware isn't protected by copyright for the most part. It's protected by patents and those are expensive. Worse once someone has one on a piece of kit they can basically shut down any open hardware that uses that idea for the next 20 years.

    1. Re:Open hardware is going to be hard by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      No, it's not tricky to pull off.

      - Widely deployed in FPGA for testing. IIoT customers don't need 1GHz performance
      - Fab relationships.
      - Older processes first, costs are reasonable especially for shuttle runs
      - Research and make use of expired patents extensively, file new ones defensively.

      Yes, there a few organizations like ours actually doing all parts of this, right now. It's more capital intensive than software, but it's also not that expensive either. Always quite satisfying when the test chips come out of fab, and work the first time.

    2. Re:Open hardware is going to be hard by sjames · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Of course, when Linux was new the argument was that an OS was just too big for a bunch of Free Software fans to manage. Only a big corporate structure could support development of anything as complex as an OS.

      Open hardware is harder, but probably not impossible. It isn't a magic cure all, but it would tend to be free of corporate decisions like "we need 10% more performance, cheat here and nobody will notice" simply due to the open nature.

      The patent swamp is a problem for that, but given how dependent the world is on secure digital hardware now, it's time to review the patent system. It may even become politically possible since it's to the point now where non-free hardware is hindering corporate profits.

    3. Re:Open hardware is going to be hard by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Of course, when Linux was new the argument was that an OS was just too big for a bunch of Free Software fans to manage. Only a big corporate structure could support development of anything as complex as an OS.

      Whoever used that argument was clueless. It was ironically the time of the infamous AT&T vs UCB law suite about exactly a free OS.

    4. Re:Open hardware is going to be hard by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 1

      Open Hardware doesn't fix problems in silicon that has already been manufactured. It might help with the next generation but it won't prevent bugs from appearing in the first place.

      This is 100% correct. However, unlike with Intel, you would be able to get a 1:1 replacement with only the hardware issue fixed.

      Open Hardware is a worthy goal but it's going to be a LOT trickier to pull off in the real world for mostly economic reasons.

      Also 100% correct. That said, people are working out the details on drastically reducing the cost of microfabrication. It won't replace cutting edge mass production but it will make it prototyping and inspection of subsystems a lot easier. The idea here is to identify hardware/timing exploits before they ever make it mass production.

      --
      Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    5. Re:Open hardware is going to be hard by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      Re 'It might help with the next generation but it won't prevent bugs from appearing in the first place."
      All we can do is fix the next generation. Bugs can be prevented with much better questions, people doing things with new CPU's and sharing their test results.
      The big brands have failed. The OS have failed.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    6. Re:Open hardware is going to be hard by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But Linux isn't an OS. It's a kernel. It only works because there already existed a libc, compiler toolchain, shell, and a vast suite of programs people already wanted to use.

      And a CPU architecture is the same. It's not enough to have a nice core, you have to also have cache, a system bus interface, a RAM interface, clock distribution, MMU, and so on. None of that stuff is easy or fun.

      dom

    7. Re:Open hardware is going to be hard by houghi · · Score: 1

      The patent swamp is a problem for that, but given how dependent the world is on secure digital hardware now, it's time to review the patent system. It may even become politically possible since it's to the point now where non-free hardware is hindering corporate profits.

      The state wants to see your dick-picks and now you think they are wiling to not be able to do that? Many are looking for ways to require backdoors by law.
      Just because we need security does not mean we are going to get it.

      --
      Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
    8. Re:Open hardware is going to be hard by Sir+Holo · · Score: 1

      There is a simple answer to this: Non-Profit Company, or still better, a "Low-profit Entity (LPE)"

      Numerous advantages to for an LPE to handle things that are best-handled with a small group of paid employees in that way. Most effort would proceed as any open-source effort, but the LPE would come in handy.

    9. Re:Open hardware is going to be hard by sjames · · Score: 1

      there already existed a libc, compiler toolchain, shell, and a vast suite of programs people already wanted to use.

      All created by those free software fans that "lacked the large corporate structure needed to produce anything as complex as an OS".

      And a CPU architecture is the same. It's not enough to have a nice core, you have to also have cache, a system bus interface, a RAM interface, clock distribution, MMU, and so on. None of that stuff is easy or fun.

      And yet, RISC-V exists.

    10. Re: Open hardware is going to be hard by kenh · · Score: 1

      All created by those free software fans that "lacked the large corporate structure needed to produce anything as complex as an OS".

      " Producing" an OS from scratch is incredibly hard and requires a massive effort, coding the missing piece of an otherwise complete software environment by "assembling" existing software into a workable OS is much, much easier. Linux stands on the shoulder of a massive army of GNU and open source developers that came before Linux bought his 80386 CPU.

      --
      Ken
    11. Re: Open hardware is going to be hard by sjames · · Score: 1

      Yes, in other words they found a replacement for the big corporate structure that worked as well or better. Note I never claimed one person would create a CPU.

  19. Backdoor-free processors for free? by Futurepower(R) · · Score: 3, Interesting

    "... I want repaired processors for free."

    So do I. I want backdoor-free processors without payment. I will send Intel the faulty processors.

    Intel CPU Backdoor Report (Jan. 1, 2018)

    My opinion: Intel is a world-class company, with poor top-level management. Brian Krzanich is not the kind of person who is necessary. He is not a person with enthusiasm for technology combined with the social ability to lead a large company. One story about Krzanich: Intel CEO sold all the stock he could after Intel learned of security bug.

    Paul Otellini, the previous CEO, was worse, in my opinion. Otellini "joined the finance department in 1974" I complained about Otellini 11 1/2 years ago in a Slashdot comment: More Intel employees should say in public what they have told me in private: Intel CEO Paul Otellini is not a competent leader. He lacks social ability. (June 09, 2006)"

    Intel's health and strength is important to everyone on the planet, it seems to me. The technological part of the company can be excellent, but recent top management has not been able to handle the challenges.

    The underlying issue, it seems to me, is that the process of choosing new CEOs tends to be defective. Perhaps all employees should have 50% of a vote, with the board of directors having 50%.

  20. Re:"I bet they were instructed to ignore the risk" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Beating the competition happens without increased risks to customers?
    How do you measure risk as a buyer and what are the alternatives?

  21. Re:"I bet they were instructed to ignore the risk" by JoeyRox · · Score: 0

    Lisa Nowak, a NASA astronaut, drove two days and 900 miles in a space diaper to confront a woman dating her ex-boyfriend. Why would anyone not do the same?

  22. Re:"I bet they were instructed to ignore the risk" by JoeyRox · · Score: 1, Funny

    To quote Linus "A *competent* CPU engineer would fix this by making sure speculation doesn't happen across protection domains." It's pretty bleeding obvious that either the Intel engineers are completely incompetent, or they were instructed to look the other way.

    Oh, Linus said it so that means he's an expert at CPU design. That's like saying competent engineers don't work at failed CPU companies yet Linus worked at Transmeta, so go figure.

  23. Fuck intel! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I dont care how much better their next CPUs might be, im jumping ship for AMD on my next upgrade. I did the same after NVidia fucked me over.

    1. Re: Fuck intel! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This. My next build will be an AMD build.

    2. Re:Fuck intel! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I said this exact same thing after I had a *fourth* hard disk die on the same machine in about 5 years. The mean time before failure is supposed to be about 100,000 hours. My time with these disks --as a whole-- have not met anything close to that. And I have switched vendors. And I paid intel extra for performance, and now the fix is making my computer run slower. And they did it. And for that reason I will switch to AMD. And nvidia has done an extremely poor job allowing full performance on my system, and for the same reason (they like their bottom line more than my experience as a customer), I will be dumping nvidia as well. So intel/nvidia out, AMD/AMD in. Competition is good because AMD is now being competitive, and I get a better experience for less. If Intel/Nvidia want to gain me back, then they will have to compete. It wouldn't hurt to get a CXO who's first career is technology, not finance. If you hire a bean counter, all you get are counted beans.

  24. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 0

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  25. Re:"I bet they were instructed to ignore the risk" by TheRaven64 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    To quote Linus "A *competent* CPU engineer would fix this by making sure speculation doesn't happen across protection domains."

    That's bullshit. When Intel introduced speculation across protection domains everyone including Linux was happy because it reduced system call costs. Without this, as soon as you get to a syscall / sysenter instruction, you stall the pipeline until all pending instructions have been committed. On a modern Intel CPU with close to 200 instructions in flight at a time, that's a measurable performance overhead.

    We've known for a long time that side channels of this kind were possible, but not that they were performant. The new attacks are not interesting because they're side channels that allow data to be disclosed, they're interesting because they're side channels that allow disclosure far faster than previously believed. CPU designers believed that this kind of attack could only be exploited to get a bit every few seconds, at which rate it's not really worth trying as an attack and is pretty easy for software to spot (hmm, why is this thread at 100% and triggering insane numbers of cache misses? Looks malicious...). Now we know that you can use these attacks to get data at about 0.5MB/s, so you can scan the whole of memory in a few minutes.

    --
    I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  26. Re:"I bet they were instructed to ignore the risk" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    hahahahahaha

    You really are an idiot. First of all, it's not Linus says, it's Linus and Theo who, wonders of wonders are in agreement, even if they express it somewhat differently.

    Secondly Linus doesn't work at a failed CPU company. He works afaik for the Linux foundation.

    Thirdly, Linus once worked for a company which failed, so therefore Intel engineers are competent and their management all above board, despite the evidence? Ever heard of a non sequitur? Because if you didn't, well, congratulations, you just wrote pretty much a schoolbook example of one.

    Fourthly, none of that addresses the issue of "who are you, who claim to know better than these too at least reasonably competent people"? Let me guess, a lame failure at life, trying to make up for that by spreading bile on various forums on internet.

  27. "I bet they were instructed to ignore the risk" by Misagon · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I was one of those who called "no way" at first, but just yesterday I found this quote from an Intel engineer. It was originally posted in a reddit thread but has since been deleted - but not before being confirmed by other former engineers at Intel.

    As someone who worked in an Intel Validation group for SOCs until mid-2014 or so I can tell you, yes, you will see more CPU bugs from Intel than you have in the past from the post-FDIV-bug era until recently.

    Why?

    Let me set the scene: It's late in 2013. Intel is frantic about losing the mobile CPU wars to ARM. Meetings with all the validation groups. Head honcho in charge of Validation says something to the effect of: "We need to move faster. Validation at Intel is taking much longer than it does for our competition. We need to do whatever we can to reduce those times... we can't live forever in the shadow of the early 90's FDIV bug, we need to move on. Our competition is moving much faster than we are" - I'm paraphrasing. Many of the engineers in the room could remember the FDIV bug and the ensuing problems caused for Intel 20 years prior. Many of us were aghast that someone highly placed would suggest we needed to cut corners in validation - that wasn't explicitly said, of course, but that was the implicit message. That meeting there in late 2013 signalled a sea change at Intel to many of us who were there. And it didn't seem like it was going to be a good kind of sea change. Some of us chose to get out while the getting was good. As someone who worked in an Intel Validation group for SOCs until mid-2014 or so I can tell you, yes, you will see more CPU bugs from Intel than you have in the past from the post-FDIV-bug era until recently.

    --
    "We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
  28. Time for open hardware by DaMattster · · Score: 1

    As others have previously, it is now time for a completely open processor. I like the work of openrisc and risc v projects. In my opinion, Intel is standing at the precipice of its own undoing. Intel's steadfast refusal to issue a recall is just hubris and might be a call to arms for competition to knock it down. This year might very well be the year that a few kickstarter projects get launched and that we have the beginnings of an exciting new trend in computing.

    1. Re:Time for open hardware by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Open hardware would not have solved this, and lets say there was an open processor how likely it is to have suffered from the same thing since it impacts processors from multiple manufacturers and architectures? Is the open hardware community going to have the resources to fix this in any other way than how it is currently being handled? Fabs to create this kind of hardware cost billions of dollars. There is no way this is happening. Maybe the open hardware community can do something in FPGAs, but good luck getting more than a few hundred mhz out of it.

  29. Sure, but... by Gilgaron · · Score: 1

    Not to be an Intel apologist, but clearly they can't afford to replace everyone's Intel with an identical socket that is unaffected by the problem. The best I'd think that could be hoped for would be a refund with depreciation of value on the processor. That'd still suck but I can't see how we'd get any more. A class action would just get us all a $15 coupon towards our next Intel purchase.

    1. Re:Sure, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And they surely wouldn't have a handy way to replace all of the soldered processors, like most laptops and virtually all tablets and phones have these days. All of those would need a motherboard replacement. $$$

    2. Re: Sure, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm sure several new vacation homes for the lawyers would also come out of a class action suit.

    3. Re:Sure, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Clearly I can't afford to repay the million dollars I stole from the bank your honor as I've already spent it.

    4. Re:Sure, but... by Gilgaron · · Score: 1

      Generally in such situations they can't make monetary restitution, so we punish them in other ways. That's all my point is, not that we have to let them slide.

    5. Re:Sure, but... by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

      "clearly they can't afford to replace everyone's Intel with an identical socket that is unaffected by the problem."

      Why do people say this? Intel is sitting on $17 BILLION in cash. Intel apologists are incredible.

    6. Re:Sure, but... by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      Re "... with an identical socket that is unaffected by the problem."
      All we can do is wait for the next CPU and see if better testing was done.
      Then upgrade.
      The global buying cycle of CPU upgrading has a few options:
      For people who play computer games and need a fast CPU:
      Trust the same brand to get a new CPU thats works next time.
      Try another existing brand that has a different, new CPU that is tested and reward them.

      Want security and know to walk away form the brands that fail?
      Find, create a better CPU and get a fab to make that for CPU use that has to be secure.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    7. Re:Sure, but... by Errol+backfiring · · Score: 1

      I seem to recall that a processor without a coprocessor was one with it, but with the coprocessor burned away. Would it be possible to burn away the management engine?

      --
      Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
    8. Re:Sure, but... by Gilgaron · · Score: 1

      Do the foundries to make those old dies even exist anymore? Validating each of those lines once brought online, debug the original design (probably couldn't remove the performance hit, either), run the production, distribute it to... whoever asks? or who can prove they bought a particular processor in 1995? That money would get spent real fast and not be done. If you want a corporate death penalty, ok, but I don't see why we pretend they can physically make all the injured parties whole again.

    9. Re:Sure, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      20 years times 200 million CPUs shipped per year = 40 billion CPUs to replace. Remind me again how it only costs 50 cents per CPU to replace them?

      And that's probably a conservative estimate. Some quarters they shipped 100m+ units.

    10. Re: Sure, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why are you going back 20 years.

      Listen, after 3 years Intel processors become EOL.

      Offer a return policy for all processors = 3 years old. You don't have to go back 20 years, those old processors did their jobs. They were faulty but no one knew(so they say).

      For laptop processors offer a coupon or a certain amount gift card. This isn't hard. If cars can do recalls then so can a god damn processor. Stop making excuses for these people and make them do their jobs. Which is if there is a defect, do a recall and fix the fucking problems.

  30. Theo wants free pfocessors by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And I want a pony

  31. Re:"I bet they were instructed to ignore the risk" by JoeyRox · · Score: 0

    Ok, so instead of one software engineer who's not a CPU designer making claims about what represents good CPU design you're quoting two software engineers who are not CPU designers. That gives a lot more weight to your argument.

  32. Good point but... by sjbe · · Score: 2

    When you look at the actual affected processors vs. the number of people who will actually get off their ass and make a claim to have a processor replaced for free, it becomes very clear how affordable this really is.

    A good point but not as good as you make it seem. Quite a lot of affected chips are not user serviceable for reasons such as being soldered to the board. This means that it isn't a simple matter of sending a customer a new chip. In many cases the boards in question won't be available for any price so the most a chipmaker could do would be to pay for a replacement. A repair simply isn't going to be an option in many cases.

    But you are right, 99.99999% of people will probably have forgotten about this in a week and the only people concerned about it are the 5 or so of us who still read slashdot. Most people won't have even heard about the problem and most of those who do wouldn't know how to deal with it anyway. Basically it will go away when the current generation of PCs is retired in a few years.

  33. Re:"I bet they were instructed to ignore the risk" by OzPeter · · Score: 1

    Funny, both me and my friend worked at companies where we were told to ignore risk. Why would intel be different?

    There is risk and there is risk. In the work I do risk means that someone could die. It may be that in your and your friends work risk means some people might not be able to access their social media platform for a few hours and not be able to post pics of their cats. For Intel the risk is that their systems run unchanged for multiple years at a time and have a huge market share and could require a hardware fix in order to correct any issues that come up.

    --
    I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
  34. Re:"I bet they were instructed to ignore the risk" by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 2

    If I may, I'd have to call this an anecdote rather than a quote. The description is from years after the Intel meeting, and doesn't have direct quotes of speech or writing of the personnel involved in the policy change.

    With that understood about the anecdote's provenance, it is _completely_ believable. It is precisely the sort of mandate that can save a company in the short term, preserving the jobs and careers and technological development the company is doing, at the risk of a deadly failure down the road. It's the sort of business risk assessment that occurs on an annual basis when testing standards and guidelines are set. It also occurs on a daily basis when security practices are created: do we accept the risk of a breach today, while this is unpatched, versus the risk of service failure or loss of business during system updates?

  35. Patent infringement by sjbe · · Score: 5, Informative

    No, it's not tricky to pull off.

    If it wasn't tricky to pull off then it would have already been done on a wide scale. I'm not saying it's impossible but it is going to be a much tougher nut to crack than open software. Mostly for economic reasons rather than technical ones.

    - Research and make use of expired patents extensively, file new ones defensively.

    Who is going to do this? Who has the funding and more importantly the incentive to do this? IBM received 8000 patents in 2016 and numerous other tech companies received thousands more each. Exactly how do you plan to match that sort of pace? How do you plan to produce anything really useful without infringing on a pile of those patents? Not to mention fending off the flesh eating lawyers that give those patents teeth...

    It's more capital intensive than software, but it's also not that expensive either.

    I'm a certified accountant and an industrial engineer. I do cost accounting for a living. It is a LOT more expensive than software no matter how clever you are. There is a reason gross margins in manufacturing hardware are far thinner than in software. You don't escape these costs by just doing design either. Someone eventually has to make the product and that will require substantial capital. Then you have the cost of distributing the product. Unlike software which can be sent across the net for nearly free, hardware has to be shipped, stored and turned into products, all of which cost non trivial amounts of cash. If you think it isn't substantially more expensive than making and distributing software you haven't done the math.

    1. Re:Patent infringement by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      From a big picture perspective, the making of the hardware has already been detached from the design of the system. Linux is everywhere. Intel could stop making CPUs tomorrow and it would not put an end to the functionality provided by systems that run Open Source software. Arguably it would be possible to further detach the making of the CPU from the design of the system, by making the CPU design part of the Open Source side, and only retaining the aspects that are specific to the manufacturing process on the manufacturing side. Would a manufacturer take the risk of making a huge investment that relies on Open Source designs? They already do. Most mobile phones are entirely worthless without Android, an Open Source software.

    2. Re:Patent infringement by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      From a big picture perspective

      Stop right there.

      Anytime anyone starts talking about "the big picture perspective", that's a huge honking tell right there that they haven't thought through what they're going to say, and they're just waving their hands about in the hope that someone else will be inspired to do several metric gigashittonnes of work to make it true.

      Been there, got the t-shirt. I'm sure as hell not doing it again. Of course you might be able to find several hundred expert engineers who are gullible enough to take the bait, but I think you'll need to improve your pitch by about three orders of magnitude first.

  36. I don't think so. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    " I bet they were instructed to ignore the risk."

    While the hood is open on the chip, the info leak seems relatively easy to fix.
    If so, then to say don't do it would only make sense if they learned way late in their design cycle.

    The thing that makes mem requests probably knows what ring the processor is at.
    With a few more parts, it could include this in the mem request.
    The part of the memory that knows the physical address also knows which rings are ok and could tag the request as not good to go.
    Then if the request was not good, the result could be set to zero.
    Just let everything run as it does now and set the result to zero.

    Removing the 'feature' might not affect the flow of the logic that much.
    As for the layout, it is not that much more logic who knows until thy try it?

  37. Not the same by sjbe · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Of course, when Linux was new the argument was that an OS was just too big for a bunch of Free Software fans to manage.

    You are making a false equivalency here. Making and distributing software is COMPLETELY different than making and distributing hardware. The economics could not be more dissimilar. The legal protections (patents vs copyright) are different. The amount of up front capital required is different. You can modify software after it has been release but you cannot do that with (most) hardware. Basically just because it worked out well for software is does not mean it will work out well for hardware. Hope for the best of course but it's likely to be a difficult nut to crack.

    Only a big corporate structure could support development of anything as complex as an OS.

    Ultimately that turned out to be true. Basically all the developers of linux and most other major OSS projects are employed at large tech firms (and a few large foundations) and are paid to maintain them. It isn't a bunch of hobbyists in their garages.

    Open hardware is harder, but probably not impossible.

    Not impossible but for non-trivial applications it appears pretty close to it. The obstacles are predominately economic ones and some legal ones and they aren't minor obstacles. I'm not about to hold my breath for patent reform anytime soon and the patent swamp is a real problem. And the economics of making and distributing hardware are immutable. I think Open Hardware is a very worthy goal but it's going to be quite the challenge.

    1. Re:Not the same by sjames · · Score: 1
  38. Selective disclosure? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I thought that was the point. So info doesn't leak to attackers. Stupid comment on this guy's part IMO. There is no way to keep something secret if you tell too many people.

  39. Insider trading implications by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It would be interesting if anyone who knew about the bug traded on the known info

  40. Re:"I bet they were instructed to ignore the risk" by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 1

    When Intel introduced speculation across protection domains everyone including Linux was happy because it reduced system call costs

    Is that the case? Was this attack known, and deemed an acceptable risk because of the incredible low rate at which data could supposedly be extracted? I remember some papers around 2015 on an attack involving data leaking between processes through the cache, but that did not rely on speculative execution IIRC.

    --
    If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
  41. Intel to Theo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Sod off!

  42. Product liability is a funny thing by sjbe · · Score: 1

    Everyone running an intel CPU will suddenly discover that they have 5-30% less processor than they paid for.

    Untrue. The hardware is unchanged and can run exactly as fast as it always did. Security updates and software slow machines all the time. You'll have to credibly explain why this case requires special consideration. Easy to claim here but not so easy in front of a judge. Frankly most people aren't even going to notice and the few that do notice are going to be corner cases, mostly in large corporations with adequate resources to deal with the problem. From a 10,000 foot view it's not clear why this is meaningfully different than any other serious malware incident. It's not as if it is the first time a flaw has been taken advantage of in hardware.

    In many cases, that difference would have resulted in going with the AMD processor. That is a real economic harm that deserves compensation.

    I'm afraid it's not nearly that easy. Product liability is a funny thing. First off there is not likely any strict liability here so there is no automatic requirement for compensation. Second, there is unlikely to be any physical danger to anyone. Third, while there is a cost to dealing with the issue it isn't clear that the cost is out of line with other serious security issues including malware. Finally, you still haven't shown the economic harm. I'm sort of playing devil's advocate here just to illustrate the challenges here. In principle I agree with you but the law very likely may not agree with us.

    1. Re:Product liability is a funny thing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The only quibble I have with your points is a practical one: in most cases, "replacing the processor" requires replacing the whole computer because computers are not, anymore, except in corner cases like gamer boxes, designed to allow chips to be replaced. Everything is soldered in place. So the only kind of "replacement" that would be feasible would be some kind of small discount on a new system. That's also true, for the most part, in server farms - no IT dept in its right mind would replace chips in a server - they would replace the blades or the whole box depending on how they're set up.

      Main thing I see coming from this is a lot of e-waste as anything more than 2-3 years old (the only systems that might get the firmware patches allowing the software patches to work) has to be replaced. Buy Dell/HP/etc stock! Short Intel, though: the hardware companies are going to want SOME compensation for pushing out all those firmware updates. And this is one case where moving to Linux or BSD doesn't help - if the firmware patches never come (which they won't for anything more than a few years old), Linux et al won't be any better than Windows for vulnerability to this bug.

    2. Re:Product liability is a funny thing by Uberbah · · Score: 1

      Security updates and software slow machines all the time.

      How does plugging a buffer overflow or privilege escalation (typical bug fixes) slow down the machine?

    3. Re:Product liability is a funny thing by bingoUV · · Score: 1

      Second, there is unlikely to be any physical danger to anyone

      Software / computer security is increasingly capable of causing physical dangers to people. If you notice, computers are parts of machines which operate physically around humans.

      E.g. : https://www.sentryo.net/cybera...

      Likelihood : Not sure what methodology you are using to compute likelihood. A huge majority of processors of the dominant architecture (X86) from the dominant company (Intel) have a relatively easy to exploit attack, over last 2 decades, some of which need to be patched but will never be due to apathy, which in turn is partly due to statements like yours. So your unquantified assertion of low likelihood is increasing the likelihood by a small amount.

      --
      Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
    4. Re:Product liability is a funny thing by sjames · · Score: 1

      The patches and thus the slowdown are necessary because the CPU does not perform as the datasheet claims. The speculative execution is supposed to have no side effects and certainly isn't supposed to leak data across privilege levels. According to the documentation, ring 3 has no way to access ring 0.

      The actual hardware fails to meet spec.

  43. Re:"I bet they were instructed to ignore the risk" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yes, because hardware isn't magic. Hardware, just like software is basically logic.

      All that engineer this or engineer that aside, anyone with half a brain understands that handing out the keys to the kingdom to anyone asking for them just in case they actually might be entitled to do so in the hope that you'll be able to stop unauthorized use before anything actually happens is an extremely stupid thing to do. It's literally playing Russian roulette with five chambers loaded, gambling that you'll be able to push a screwdriver in front of the hammer in time to save yourself if needed.

    And I'm not making _any_ argument, I'm just noting that these two people, who are generally considered both smart and talented but usually can't sing from the same sheet to save their lives are in complete agreement.

    You, on the other hand make all kinds of claims about their personalities, their motives, the motives Intel management etc, etc.. And you won't event tell us who you are, or what your qualifications are. (None, I take it.)

    I'm done with you. Good day, sir.

  44. Obligatory:Intel CPU Backdoor Report (Jan 1 2018) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Informative

    Change log:
    2018/01/01 - Added 14 Useful Links. Disable Intel ME 11 via undocumented NSA "High Assurance Platform" mode, Blackhat Dec 2017 presentation, Intel ME CVEs (CVSS Scored 9.0-10.0)

    Intel CPU Backdoor Report
    The goal of this report is to make the existence of Intel CPU backdoors a common knowledge and provide information on backdoor removal.

    What we know about Intel CPU backdoors so far:

    TL;DR version

    Your Intel CPU and Chipset is running a backdoor as we speak.

    The backdoor hardware is inside the CPU/Bridge and the backdoor firmware (Intel Management Engine) is in the chipset flash memory.

    30C3 Intel ME live hack:
    [Video] 30C3: Persistent, Stealthy, Remote-controlled Dedicated Hardware Malware
    @21:43, keystrokes leaked from Intel ME above the OS, wireshark failed to detect packets.

    [Quotes] Vortrag:
    "the ME provides a perfect environment for undetectable sensitive data leakage on behalf of the attacker".

    "We can permanently monitor the keyboard buffer on both operating system targets."

    Backdoor removal:
    The backdoor firmware can be removed by following this guide using the me_cleaner script.
    Removal requires a Raspberry Pi (with GPIO pins) and a SOIC clip.

    2017 Dec Update:
    Intel ME on recent CPUs may be disabled by enabling the undocumented NSA HAP mode.

    Decoding Intel backdoors:
    The situation is out of control and the Libreboot/Coreboot community is looking for BIOS/Firmware experts to help with the Intel ME decoding effort.

    If you are skilled in these areas, download Intel ME firmwares from this collection and have a go at them, beware Intel is using a lot of counter measures to prevent their backdoors from being decoded (explained below).

    Useful links (Added 2018 Jan 1):
    Disabling Intel ME 11 via undocumented mode (NSA High Assurance Platform mode)
    Blackhat 2017: How To Hack A Turned Off Computer Or Running Unsigned Code In Intel Management Engine
    EFF: Intel's Management Engine is a security hazard, and users need a way to disable it
    Sakaki's EFI Install Guide/Disabling the Intel Management Engine
    Intel ME bug storm: Hardware vendors race to identify and provide updates for dangerous Intel flaws.
    CVE-2017-5689: An unprivileged network attacker could gain system privileges to provisioned Intel manageability SKUs
    CVE-2017-5705: Multiple buffer overflows in kernel in Intel Manageability Engine Firmware
    CVE-2017-5706: Multiple buffer overflows in kernel in Intel Server Platform Services Firmware

  45. Incrediby bad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    He's right. "disclsoure" is incredibly bad. My English teacher would have rapped his knuckles.

  46. Re:"I bet they were instructed to ignore the risk" by Kohath · · Score: 2

    Funny, both me and my friend worked at companies where we were told to ignore risk. Why would intel be different?

    Because all companies are not identical? Do you think everything you and your (imaginary?) friend have in common is also common to every company?

    Also, what do you mean by "risk"? Do you think it's reasonable (or even possible) to eliminate all risk of a security breach? When did anyone accomplish that?

  47. Re:"I bet they were instructed to ignore the risk" by TheRaven64 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Was this attack known, and deemed an acceptable risk because of the incredible low rate at which data could supposedly be extracted?

    Not this specific attack, but it was known that any source of nondeterminism in a processor was a source of side channels. These were largely ignored because these attacks get lots of papers at top security conferences but are really hard and slow to carry out in practice. Most of the existing attacks used the cache, but there are others involving things like the fact that computation on denormals is much slower than on normal floating point values (a fun one of these lets you scrape browser contents via WebGL and I don't believe has been mitigated yet in spite of being published a couple of years ago).

    Speculative execution was known to be a potential source of these side channels for a while. Now that it's shown to be feasible, expect a lot more similar attacks.

    --
    I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  48. The consequence of breaking embargos by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Maybe Theo de Raadt would be notified more in advance if he didn't break embargos like he did with the KRACK vulnerability...

  49. Cost of outsourcing by sjbe · · Score: 4, Insightful

    From a big picture perspective, the making of the hardware has already been detached from the design of the system.

    Doesn't matter. You still have to make it and that still will cost money. Doesn't matter if you make it in house or if you hire someone else to do it. If doesn't matter if you have the secret formula for Coke, you still have to put sugar water in bottles and ship it somewhere which is expensive. It's FAR harder to bootstrap the funding for an open source hardware design than open source software.

    Would a manufacturer take the risk of making a huge investment that relies on Open Source designs? They already do. Most mobile phones are entirely worthless without Android, an Open Source software.

    You're conflating issues. You can already send an open source chip design to a chip fab or a hardware design to a contract manufacturer. My day job is general manager of a contract manufacturer (wire harnesses) so I'm more than passingly familiar. But just because you have outsourced production doesn't mean that the costs for it go away. Your analogy to Android is a meaningless one here.

    Just because someone else makes it doesn't make the patent swamp go away. Open source software works precisely because how copyright law is written. The GPL and every other license basically only works because of copyright law. That doesn't apply to hardware. To protect hardware designs you have to get patents on the design and that costs serious money. Not only that you have to avoid infringing other companies patents which is not a trivial exercise when companies like IBM, Google, Apple, etc are getting thousands of new ones every year.

    Companies that rely heavily on open source software can do so because they have an alternative revenue source. Typically service or engineering - sometimes ads. What is the alternative revenue source for open hardware? Service? Maybe but the revenue streams aren't quite as clear for open hardware. And even if they become clear it still doesn't solve the capital costs and patent issues.

    I'm not saying it's impossible but it definitely will be difficult for open hardware to achieve the sort of success we've seen with open software.

  50. Patents needed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The ONLY example were patent enforcement works in OTHER people's favor. Thanks Intel.

  51. Stop spamming retard APK by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Alexander Peter Kowalski you really need to stop spamming your work that offers no provable security.
    I provided you with numbers showing that your work reduces the attack surface by less than 1/(1x10^100) or a value that easily rounds to 0.
    Your work doesn't stop attacks before hand only long after they are discovered.
    Your work also requires that people take manual action to get those updates other wise they are not protected.
    So just remember folks Alexander Peter Kowalski can't wait to spam is garbage work that is as effective as an AV scanner that matches only based off of file names.

  52. Re:"I bet they were instructed to ignore the risk" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Lisa Nowak, a NASA astronaut, drove two days and 900 miles in a space diaper to confront a woman dating her ex-boyfriend. Why would anyone not do the same?

    fake story. you imagine she wore a diaper because they were in her car, yet zero evidence that she EVER wore one.

  53. Re:FOSS Threat Vector by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I think your making a mountain out of a mole hill. I agree, Intel should take a hit, but you DO NOT fix hardware problems with software. Not that it can't be done, but that is not the way it should be done.

    The team that developed the lookahead hardware wasn't in sync with the other teams working on other parts of the CPU. Sounds like they went to press still lacking the ability to set parameters that would limit the scope or bounds of the lookahead.

    I doubt anyone was instructed to ignore the problem. I think they went with what they had at that time, then someone hit the GO button and pushed the product out the door. Was it an EARLY release? Most likely.

    The problem I see is the way the info was released. Why is it so hard to find good help to run some of the largest companies in the world. Management dropped the ball. End of story!

  54. Re:Typical by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    *BSD isn't even as big as a pimple on bull's ass. *BSD is a non-player in the real world.

  55. Core issue is customers. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    AMD gave performance AND security BUT that's NOT what people wanted. They wanted performance above all else to the point the media was calling AMD the walking dead till their latest CPU came out. Fanbois were bragging and telling everyone they wouldn't buy AMD because...tah dah...performance.

  56. Mixing brand name and technology by perpenso · · Score: 1

    Linux Now Has its First Open Source RISC-V Processor, Slashdot. To answer AC's question a few moths later: "What's the big advantage with RISC over ARM or x86?" Meltdown, Spetre.

    ARM is a RISC architecture, and plenty of RISC architectures suffer from Spectre

    I think the GP was using RISC as an abbreviation for the RISC-V brandname, not RISC as in the architecture design approach. Indicating an advantage of RISC-V CPUs over ARM or x86 CPUs.

  57. That is just APK not signing his work by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That is just APK (Alexander Peter Kowalski) not signing his work.
    As such he will post it 100 more times today, just like he does with hosts.
    He doesn't sign things that are ultra racist or ultra anti-Semitic but he likes to post them.
    He will frequently do the same to make it look like he has some support of his poor security advice as well.

    1. Re:That is just APK not signing his work by Wootery · · Score: 1

      That is just APK (Alexander Peter Kowalski) not signing his work.

      ...and you are...?

      Anyway: citation needed. Personally I suspect it's the tooth fairy.

    2. Re: That is just APK not signing his work by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I thought it was Creimer to be honest. Ever since he became a troll, the number of these types of posts has ryzen(see what I did there) :)

  58. the muscle of corporate PR by AlwinBarni · · Score: 1

    This is the best comment to the situation I have read so far.

    I find it peculiar that when Intel CPUs have a bug, it is "all computers", otherwise CPUs manufacturers are named, similar when MS Windows have security issues it is "all computers", whilst otherwise an OS is named explicitly. One may say it is purely because of the sheer number, however I do listen and read a lot and the corporate PR behind the "neutral" news announcements is so obvious that it becomes comical to certain extent.

    Once, when listening to some podcast the WiFi key issue was mentioned and one could almost hear the chink of silvers behind the question "Are all OSes affected by this ...?". One can say that the question is very legitimate - yes it is, when it is asked in each case.

  59. More memory needed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Speculative execution across ring changes is the root cause of this.

    Amazing how cascade works. Ultimately as Arstechnica pointed out things like the TLB, pre-fetching, and splitting as well as rings and modes all result from a lack of ability to fitting the entire page table into chip-memory. Just think of how many problems would go away if one could do that.

  60. Re:Obligatory:Intel CPU Backdoor Report (Jan 1 201 by dave420 · · Score: 1

    Please stop spamming.

  61. "I bet they were instructed to ignore the timing" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Sounds like timing is the thing that doesn't need to cross security boundaries. Timing itself can be inferred.

  62. Re:"I bet they were instructed to ignore the risk" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Bullshit you say, and yet it's only Intel and a few, comparatively insignificant ARM chips which are affected by meltdown, which btw, was what Linus was referring to.

    I can only presume AMD is an imaginary entity in your little world, because they apparently managed to solve all these impossible problems without handing out the keys to the kingdom to everyone who asked for them.

    Bullshit, yeah, plenty of that in your post.

  63. Software is part of the problem by GrahamJ · · Score: 1

    I'm no fan of Intel but I can't help but see Meltdown as at least partly the fault of OS vendors. They decided to keep kernel and user memory in the same address space for performance despite known problems with branch prediction and despite KPTI being an option.

    I doubt Intel ever claimed prediction could not be detected nor forced kernel devs not to use KPTI. Usually when a vulnerability is found in a software architecture you blame the software.

    1. Re: Software is part of the problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is a vulnersbiiity in the hardware.

      Software can mitigate this, at a 5-30% penalty. From what I read software cannot completely stop the attacks.

    2. Re:Software is part of the problem by Agripa · · Score: 1

      I'm no fan of Intel but I can't help but see Meltdown as at least partly the fault of OS vendors. They decided to keep kernel and user memory in the same address space for performance despite known problems with branch prediction and despite KPTI being an option.

      I doubt Intel ever claimed prediction could not be detected nor forced kernel devs not to use KPTI. Usually when a vulnerability is found in a software architecture you blame the software.

      Intel did not introduce PCID until recently so I can hardly fault the OS vendors about something which Intel was apparently aware of without notifying them.

    3. Re:Software is part of the problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I can't help but see Meltdown as at least partly the fault of OS vendors. They decided to keep kernel and user memory in the same address space for performance

      Uh, they did what, now?

      What modern OS doesn't keep kernel memory in its own protected address space?

  64. Re: Obligatory:Intel CPU Backdoor Report (Jan 1 20 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    yet another vulnerability that could have been avoided by using C++ instead of C. std::string, anyone?

  65. Meltdown and VMs? by grub · · Score: 1


    I've been seeing some estimates of 5%-30% load increases when patches for Meltdown are applied to various OSs.

    So I'm running VirtualBox for VM test-bed stuff. If the host OS (Linux, in this case) has this extra load, I'm guessing the guests will also have their own extra load added in. Is it correct to think that the host CPU might well have >50% load thanks to this?

    --
    Trolling is a art,
  66. Re:"I bet they were instructed to ignore the risk" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    (Posting anon to protect myself.)

    I was involved with Intel and their Curie module.

    If you know how bad that was and how many silicon level bugs there were, well, at this point I think you would believe it.

    They made a TV series from that chip (as a PR move). Just a year later, they EOLd the chip and now Mouser/etc have thousands of unsellable Curie chips that no one wants. Intel even removed all traces of their TV show event, as if it was an embarassment to them. Everyone that was part of that event left Intel, as far as I know.

    The Intel CEO grabbed a lot of the glory of dealing with celebrities and just wanted to be on TV. I can tell you that people who worked that project were treated like crap, but the execs got TV time and glory.

    The chip still sucked and its unsellable, now.

    Intel gave up on IoT. They had to. They would not listen to anyone and of course they failed since this is not their core competancy.

    Intel is now a joke. H1B's walk the hallways. And contractors, tons of contractors. What does that tell you, when they hire temps more than fulltime people?

    I would not integrate with Intel chips, given what I've seen.

  67. Re:Typical by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    FreeBSD represents over 50% of the data moving across the Internet. And it's estimated that 90% of all traffic going through a device powered by FreeBSD or in-house custom OS based on FreeBSD.

  68. Re:"I bet they were instructed to ignore the risk" by thegarbz · · Score: 1

    I am willing to bet a marsbar that you weren't "told to ignore risk" but rather that the risk assessment process was handled by a different department or at a different paygrade.

    Humans are horrible judges of risk which is why it *should* never be left up to individual people (especially people within a single field) to determine.

  69. I have an idea: let's overclock to compensate by Ken_g6 · · Score: 1

    Intel should let all affected processors on all motherboards be overclockable. That might satisfy the tech nerds who care about this most without costing Intel too much money.

    --
    (T>t && O(n)--) == sqrt(666)
  70. Re:"I bet they were instructed to ignore the risk" by Tailhook · · Score: 1

    That meeting there in late 2013 signalled a sea change at Intel to many of us who were there.

    Well maybe it was, but these problems predate 2013. Guess the "validation" that was happening in the 18 years between 1995 and 2013 didn't amount to much.

    --
    Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
  71. Re:"I bet they were instructed to ignore the risk" by pak9rabid · · Score: 2

    But, wasn't Meltdown an issue with Intel CPU's far before this change in validation happened?

  72. No one else noticed the typo in the headline? by Mortimer82 · · Score: 1
    Right now, at 200 comments, it reads

    OpenBSD's De Raadt Pans 'Incredibly Bad' Disclsoure of Intel CPU Bug

    "Disclosure" in the headline has been incorrectly typed out is "disclsoure".

  73. FPGA by thegreatbob · · Score: 1

    Perhaps the groundwork needs to be laid for an open, modular FPGA platform, to allow for the creation/modification of CPU cores without having to rework the silicon weekly.

    --
    There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
  74. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  75. the solder contract by epine · · Score: 1

    I won't argue he's wrong, but I think as fast as CPUs change you'd have to have across the board reductions in workload capacity by a significant number (ie, the 30% touted initially) to be able to claim harm and justify a recall.

    Man, have you ever drunk the software caveat-emptor Kool-Aid whole cloth.

    The specifications for hardware and software are not that it will work as specified.

    The specification is that, with sufficient user cleverness (and sweat streaming off a bulging forehead, and unbroken vigilance) it is possible to almost get the hardware or software to attain its putative performance ratings without catching one or more incurable black hat diseases along the way.

    This ethos dates from the 1980s and 1990s when the upgrade cycle (both hardware and software) was three years at most, and the whole drama could barely play out in that time frame.

    I bought my Sandy Bridge Xeon in January 2013 and I'm not sure I'd take a free swap to Intel's newest equivalent, because the hassle of swapping over probably exceeds the expected gain (my average uptime, when the power company isn't replacing faulty-from-birth concrete power poles, has averaged well over a year, and there hasn't been a single hardware or OS glitch that I know about since I eliminated one suspect hardware card, back in the first few months).

    I make fairly heavy use of BSD jails, and I've always regarded process isolation as more important than raw performance.

    Punting isolation from hardware to software is a Sisyphean burden. One important binary on your system that wasn't compiled with the right compiler (on the right day) and the game is lost. Worst, if there's a 'retguard' gadget variant of the attack, you also have to use the right linker (on the right day), because security is (potentially) no longer link-order independent. Lovely, lovely, isn't that lovely.

    This giant, amorphous, hard-to-discern attack surface is now my problem because "durf durf, complicated, too many transistors" and "we can't read widely circulated papers pointing out that one of our optimizations is full of shit" and "caveat-emptor grandfather clause—so suck it!".

    If there was a paper from long ago pointing this out (as I've seen stated in this thread, but haven't check out myself) then there's going to be an MFT of legal discovery pointed at Intel to find out what they knew and when they knew it.

    The GHz wars were a great thing, because it rapidly erased your worst corporate blunders.

    The beleaguered end-user responded to constant threat by refusing to buy computer systems with CPUs and memory soldered to the mainboard (only then it was a bug in an ASUS northbridge—newly introduced when they bumped the much-loved board from an A to B revision—that caused the disk controller to scribble randomly over my hard drive, taking out three different OS boot partitions in a single bound).

    Once vendors start soldering CPUs and memory to main boards, it's like, so long puberty, you're apparently an adult now.

    Adults in every other industry recall or replace products that don't work as least marginally to original specifications (without forcing the end-user to jump through a thousand flaming hoops).

    It's high time to set aside childish ideas that this technology (alone) can demand unlimited user backflips before any restitution is warranted or justified.

  76. Re:"I bet they were instructed to ignore the risk" by Bengie · · Score: 1

    To steal a recent quote about this issue, "I don't need to be a baker to know when the bread is stale."

  77. The economic barriers for chips are huge by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    A cutting-edge fab can cost $10 billion. A non-cutting edge fab isn't going to be remotely competitive with offerings from Intel.

    Tape out to a foundry? Doable, though expensive. And if you do that, how do you know the NSA doesn't have them bake in a tiny spy core into the chip?

    Think of it as the hardware equivalent of the Ken Thompson compiler-injection attack.

  78. Ubuntu was notified under NDA on 11/9. by emil · · Score: 1

    Here is their timeline. Surprising that (unlike RedHat) there is still no patch.

    2017 Nov 09: the Ubuntu Security team is notified by Intel under NDA

  79. patch metabolism by epine · · Score: 1

    Mind you Intel will presumably claim KPTI and its equivalents on Windows and macOS fix the security problem and any change in performance doesn't violate any sort of contractual agreement.

    You are mentally modelling KPTI as an annoying one-time fix (with not much further burden), and not as a brittle work-around that requires permanent vigilance to pervasively deploy and enforce (Google's retpoline certainly falls into the class of permanent vigilance burdens).

    Not to mention that your carefully performance-balanced server loads need to be re-engineered around this unpredictable new performance sink-hole. KPTI is not as simple as a CPU microcode update (which also has performance implications, though not usually broad and severe).

    This whole mindset of "a patch, is a patch, is a patch" coincides with faulty logic in OS hardening. You see this opinion all the time that an attack mitigation that can be easily worked around isn't worth implementing.

    That's the non-metabolic view.

    The metabolic view is that every extra difficulty adds complexity to carrying out a successful attack. When we are trying to build something constructive, difficulty scales exponentially in the size of the specification, as we all know. When we are tying to build something destructive (a root kit), this same scaling term is now magically rendered sub-linear. (There might actually be a grain of truth here, due to the inherent asymmetry of success and failure, but that should hardly be taken for granted.)

    We try to stack up ASLR and sundry related obstacles to tilt the balance in our favour, then along comes Intel, who dumps a permanent burden on the white hat side of the fence.

    How many hundreds of millions of devices out there are never going to receive a patched OS that's compatible with the existing, validated device configuration?

    Well, of course, the newest version of the OS is a strict superset of the old OS (though MacOS is not included on this list by virtue of superior Design), and you should stay up to date anyway.

    I've been in this industry since the 8080. Enough already with the Stockholm syndrome.

    Just imagine Boeing retrofitting your turbo fan with 20% less maximal thrust due to faulty wing design. So the airlines need to stop flying Boeing into Denver on hot days? (Surely your air service scheduling system can manage one more tiny constraint.) What's the big deal? Problem solved.

  80. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  81. Calling it "Meltdown" was stupid. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Don't know who dubbed it "meltdown" but some non-techies think that this involves physical damage to their processor.

  82. Because Intel neglected *BSD... by emil · · Score: 1

    ...I would not be surprised to see advocacy for alternative architectures from those circles, be that AMD or ARM.

    Theo can now rightly say that Intel design flaws will have 0-day impacts on OpenBSD that are beyond his control.

  83. Get a grip by sjbe · · Score: 1

    If Intel are not going to supply paid replacements at reasonable cost, then I expect them to be forced to supply for free all necessary info to anyone else who wishes to make and sell replacements to me on pain of jailing every single shareholder.

    You were being more or less reasonable up until that last sentence. Then you took a sharp left towards Crazytown. Intel isn't going to be forced to give up their trade secrets or intellectual property and their shareholders certainly aren't going to jail because you are having a temper tantrum. They aren't going to replace every processor made in the last 20 years nor are they going to even try because it would be impossible. At most you might get a small financial settlement through a class action suit. That's reality and I suggest you start dealing with it.

    If they are not willing to co-operate with their customers in producing an equitable fix, the whole lot of them are guilty of unjust enrichment, obtaining pecuniary advantage by deception, fraud, conspiracy to defraud, and anything else a bunch of greedy corporate lawyers can invent.

    There is absolutely no evidence that fraud was involved because there was no evidence of intent to deceive. It was to all appearances an honest (albeit serious) error. Therefore by definition it isn't fraud,deception or any of the other words you so casually tossed out there. They may have some product liability but it isn't going to result in jail time for anyone unless there is information we don't yet know.

    If Intel goes bust as a result of this, we can expect the official receiver to sell off the patents to someone who will sell us cheaper and more reliable processors (probably not Cyrix).

    Intel isn't going anywhere. If companies like VW and BP don't get the death penalty for actual provable fraud, Intel certainly isn't going to see much more than a slap on the wrist.

  84. Nothing like Takata by sjbe · · Score: 2

    How is this different (aside from magnitude/number of units sold) from Takata's airbag recall?

    Nobody is going to die from this mistake. Pretty big and important difference there. Product defects that result in actual provable fatalities tend to get a lot more scrutiny.

    I suspect a recall this large would bankrupt Intel, much like the airbag recall is bankrupting Takata.

    Won't happen and while this is a serious issue, it isn't THAT serious. I expect Intel will pay some cash to settle some class action lawsuits (and so will some other chipmakers) but that's probably about as far as it will go unless there are revelations we haven't heard yet.

    1. Re: Nothing like Takata by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nobody can die from this? What about all those workstations and computers in hospitals that run Intel. What about 911 data centers? What if a PoC comes out, a hacker takes it and writes some code, creates some ransomware or bonnet, then pow, the hospital is crippled. Staff can't treat patients effectively because they don't have the information and data they need to make decisions based on life or death.

      This is another reason I grow weary of replacing humans with computers. We are dumbing down ourselves and allowing computers to take over every task we deem as mundain.

    2. Re:Nothing like Takata by Scarred+Intellect · · Score: 1

      Yea, I thought of that right after I clicked "Submit"...

    3. Re: Nothing like Takata by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We are dumbing down ourselves and allowing computers to take over every task we deem as mundain.

      Such as spell-checking, for example.

  85. Re:"I bet they were instructed to ignore the risk" by TheRaven64 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Bullshit you say, and yet it's only Intel and a few, comparatively insignificant ARM chips which are affected by meltdown, which btw, was what Linus was referring to.

    Ye, because Intel patented the technique and didn't license it to anyone else.

    I can only presume AMD is an imaginary entity in your little world, because they apparently managed to solve all these impossible problems without handing out the keys to the kingdom to everyone who asked for them.

    Nope, AMD pays a higher penalty on system calls, though they mitigate this to some extent by having shorter and narrower pipelines.

    --
    I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  86. Re:"I bet they were instructed to ignore the risk" by GrahamJ · · Score: 1

    I'm inclined to agree. Perhaps the CPU engineer could have foreseen prediction leaks, but so too could the OS devs have foreseen problems sharing address space. Why was there not already a KPTI switch?

    There's plenty of egg to go 'round faces if you ask me.

  87. Re:"I bet they were instructed to ignore the risk" by Guybrush_T · · Score: 1

    I'm personally stunned to see the extend of the Intel-bashing. This "bug" has been around for years and everyone was fine. From a QA perspective, the product was (almost) perfect. Now, yes, a bug has been discovered after years ... that's life.

    I'm not an Intel fan but seriously, most people don't realize how tricky exploiting this flaw is. Yes, we have a good exploit now and it works remarkably well, which is why it is such a serious issue. But I can't blame Intel for that, except if they knew it was *that* serious and decided to ignore it.

    But in every design there is a security risk and you investigate them and you conclude that some are not likely to happen and sometimes, you may be wrong. But this is a really non-trivial problem, and I'm very surprised to see everybody taking this as a "stupid bug" and ranting about Intel problems (which exist for sure but just like in any company).

    But if that was such a stupid bug, why did it go unnoticed for years ??? Kudos to the security researchers finding it.

  88. The real solution... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Would be making Intel give up or provide free licenses to all its patents/copyrights on architectures older than the ones they were willing to replace processors on, and allow 3rd parties to develop compatible processors for Intel architecture motherboards.

    Hell, while we are at it, force them to provide documentation for third party developers at some fixed licensing cost for the next 10 years as a punitive measure, opening us back up to second source motherboard and cpu chipsets, something Intel slowly forced out of the market between the Pentium Pro and Pentium 4 eras (Core 2 boards with non-Intel chipsets were mostly P4 boards, with 1333 and above being limited to Intel only chipsets?)

    That would be the real way to solve this problem once and for all. Monocultures on hardware platforms with more than a fraction of a percent of marketshare need to be stamped out. While once can say that 'the market can decide that for itself' it obviously can't, and the failures this can cause ruins whole generations of hardware that may only be fit for offline use (basically impossible today) or the scrap heap.

    As a random addition: Thanks to Intel ME, there is a good probability everything after the LGA1366 hardware would be difficult to use aftermarket CPUs on thanks to the firmware signing, so that would have to go in order to allow 3rd party cpu support.

    1. Re:The real solution... by Hal_Porter · · Score: 1

      I think you'd be hard pressed to convince US politicians of either party to go full on trustbusters on Intel. Especially as they'll claim they're not a monopoly.

      Though they're definitely turning into one

      https://www.cpubenchmark.net/m...

      --
      echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
  89. Re:"I bet they were instructed to ignore the risk" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Well, that's a good use of a patent then. Who'd have thunk. It's not really all that relevant though, Intel cheated for performance, patented their cheat and eventually got bitten in the arse by it. Now they are trying to pull everyone else with them. That's the story, and it really leaves us only with two options, either Intel are incompetent, or they are corrupt. Why exactly nobody else did the same thing is neither here nor there.

    And yes, that might very well be that AMD pays more for syscalls, but the point is, they are pretty damned close to Intel as is. ...And they didn't have to resort to the magical patents to get there. In fact they are so close that Intel apparently are pressuring Linus/Microsoft to gimp AMD with the Meltdown patches, although they are not needed, in the name of some ominous "general security" "threat". Yeah, it's bullshit, but that's how afraid they are of AMD.

  90. Re:"I bet they were instructed to ignore the risk" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That's bullshit. When Intel introduced speculation across protection domains everyone including Linux was happy because it reduced system call costs.

    And I'd be happy too if you were selling me beef at $0.50/pound. Even if you told me you weren't washing out the containers every single time and those sorts of time savings were why the beef were so cheap. Until, of course, it turns out that people weren't washing their hands and failing to wear gloves all the time.

    We've known for a long time that side channels of this kind were possible, but not that they were performant. The new attacks are not interesting because they're side channels that allow data to be disclosed, they're interesting because they're side channels that allow disclosure far faster than previously believed.

    And this is the issue. Cryptography experts routinely speak of cryptographic schemes being insecure well before attacks on them are performant. It's understood that it's likely someone will come up with a more effective attack within a couple dozen years likely on at least *some* of the potential vectors of attack which will render at least *some* of those cryptographic schemes no longer valid, so it's better to move away from those schemes now. So, even if we were to acknowledge what you're saying, it stands to reason that once those papers were published (a quick google search and there's papers about effective cache attacks from at least 2013) that changes should been made then. Instead, ARM, AMD, and Intel all waited until a performant attack exists and then there's a scramble to try to find fixes and workarounds.

    PS - STEALTHMEM: System-Level Protection Against Cache-Based Side Channel Attacks in the Cloud from 2012 and it sounds like much better performance costs compared to KAISER, although not being a security researcher I have no idea if this would be sufficiently to protest against speculative execution as well.

  91. FDIV violated the ISA, Meltdown does not. by Brannon · · Score: 1

    In the case of FDIV, one could point to the IEEE floating point specification (and a hand-calculator) and show that the Intel processor produced a verifiably wrong answer to a divide operation.

    There is an explicit set of rules (called this instruction set architecture or ISA) which govern exactly how a given computer is allowed to behave, and the CPU vendors all produced chips which follow those rules.

    The ISA says that the memory returned by a load operation is subject to the permissions as setup through the virtual memory protocol, it provides no protection to a malicious person inferring the secret through some other means. They would never provide such a guarantee because there is no known solution to the general problem of 'side-channel communication'.

    So, if Intel was looking for a legal solution to avoid paying for a recall--all they have to do is say, "you wanted an x86 ISA chip, that's what you got. caveat emptor". You can't claim they even violated "fitness for a purpose" constraints (in jurisdictions where those protections apply) because these chips are perfectly fit for the purpose of running non-malicious code--and there is basically no known theoretical solution which guarantees containment of malicious code (apart from wiping all implementation state when switching between different threads or something).

    Now in practice, Intel (and the other affected manufacturers) are going to do better than throwing their hands up and saying "it's your problem", because there is free market pressure to do so. But they are most likely on firm legal ground in avoiding any sort of massive recall.

  92. Re:"I bet they were instructed to ignore the risk" by WaffleMonster · · Score: 1

    But if that was such a stupid bug, why did it go unnoticed for years ??? Kudos to the security researchers finding it.

    1.) What is the relationship between time to detection and the level of stupidity necessary to create a bug in the first place?

    2.) If a bug gets noticed immediately does that necessarily make it stupid?

    3.) If a bug goes unnoticed for some period of time does that necessarily make it not stupid?

    Answers:
    1 = None
    2 = No
    3 = No

  93. Re: Time to dismantle you point by point again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Avg antivirus is taking up 17mb on your system. While your Host File is taking up a whopping 37mb. A single view program that just adds entries to a Host File takes up 37mb of fucking ram. Jesus Christ man. You talk about bloat. Your program is filled with bloat. A single view program that adds entries to a text file should not take 37mb of ram. Ever.

  94. Retard APK use old ineffective solutions by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Funny how all of those recommendations from pros are ancient in computer terms.
    How come none of those pros is recommending your software, must not be very effective then?
    I wouldn't call HpHosts including your software at the bottom in the Misc. section a recommendation of it, instead it seems like an also ran.
    Also a surprising number of /. quotes you use have been taken out of context, retracted, or disowned so all other should be viewed as suspect.
    Furthermore user testimonials are not proof, so why don't you just stop embarrassing your self by using them as they are mostly used by commercials on late night TV pushing questionable products (hey that sounds strangely like your work too).
    Just because Alexander Peter Kowalski can't follow simple math and logic doesn't mean it is wrong, as they actually do prove that APK's work is easily circumvented and offers no real security.
    Yet I see you are still making that same tired claim (your more with less claim in case you lost track) with no evidence, or proof to back it up.
    I am not Arth1 but then you have claimed I am everyone who has ever dared point out your near endless failings at one point or another.

    I'm not the one making grandiose claims here without proof, you are so you are the one who needs to offer actual proof.
    I keep asking for proof and you keep failing to provide any because apparently your work is indefensible.

    I might actually believe what you say if you could maybe offer some actual proof of any one of the following but I suspect you can't and instead will go full retard.
    1. How it is physically possible for your software to enumerate all possible hosts (about 6x10^98) in a single domain, as any script can simply generate any random valid host name and add that to a valid domain name thus forcing you to have to block all possible hosts in a single domain to block that domain?
    2. How a hosts file can stop inbound connections?
    3. That the Chinese actually did copy you instead of implementing old, simple, and obvious ideas entirely on their own, and the article from The Register you keep posting is not proof or evidence as no where does it mention you, or your work that you admit to copying (porting) from someone else first.

    1. Re:Retard APK use old ineffective solutions by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      His post you replied to knocks you out from the get go on your theory by using reality. You butthurt apk knocks you out all over this forums for weeks as you stalk him? Does anyone recommend or like your work? Prove you even have any security people and slashdotters say works. They do his. Newsflash: malwarebytes programs all are at the bottom of hphosts dunce. Quotes from users looked solid and so do quotes by security and web pros saying hosts are good security. Apk totalled your buddy on how much his program uses too in this thread. He doesn't need to enumerate all hosts. Only those that are threats! He blocks C&C for a botnet infector on a user machine neither can go out\in. He posted proof china copied part of his work (dns part. his program is only 1 that does it in hosts programs. He did do it before china. His program is 5 years old). You make grandiose clams with no proof. He shoots you down.

  95. If OS defect; why not all architectures affected? by CraigCruden · · Score: 1

    It is my understanding that Meltdown is Intel only, Spectre affects AMD/ARM/Intel (though not the same impact). I don't believe either of these exploits affect POWER or SPARC. Basically Meltdown is caused by being overly aggressive in that it does not check permissions to access -- until after it has moved it to cache, AMD checks this before. Using this and the ability to get timing information (only really needed for debugging) - a clever algorithm can basically access and piece together kernel (protected data) on the processor from user space processes. To me if one architecture has issues with something and all others don't it leads me to the conclusion that it is an architectural (CPU) design defect.

    I am not familiar with the internals of it and it has been a good 30+ years since I have written x86 assembly code (and I am sure it has changed a lot, but they do keep backwards compatibility). Memory segmentation in Intel chips is a legacy that dates back to not being able to address the entire memory space because the limitation of memory being larger than addressable space due to the limitations of 16 bits. The memory had to be addressed by using a segment register and then offset from that register (a segment at that time would be limited to 64K). It was never designed as a way to protect the kernel address space. This memory addressing scheme is both costly and reduced the ability to usefully use the address space. Today 64 bit processors can address 16 exabytes, and the segmentation is a legacy left over from the early days. Use of segmented memory to protect the kernel is IMHO a hack that only serves to duct-tape over the defect and the downside is that it affects performance. I thought most other architectures (that are not affected) -- have flat and not segmented memory?

  96. "I want repaired processors for free" by SeaFox · · Score: 1

    I don't ask for free replacement, but as someone who has been looking to build a new machine for a couple years, I would now like to know when we can expect new processors that are not venerable to any of these issues.

  97. Tavis Ormandy+AVG + 5/11mb big mistake by U by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Everyone KNOWS antivirus slows you down - my program speeds you UP 2 ways (like no other of its kind).

    See subject & lookup Tavis Ormandy & see if he found security issues in AVG (bet he did - he did in just about every AV there is) & it's due to complexity room for exploit & shitty coding!

    * Tavis found NONE in my work (he'd have to find holes in the IP stack itself as it's solid & proven since 1973 iirc).

    APK

    P.S.=> My program uses ~10mb resident as 64-bit - less in 32-bit OS & 32-bit model about 5mb there (but has to load emulation DLL in Win64 OS for 32-bit) as it's resident protecting hosts BEYOND Windows' WFP/SFP ACL protection & only uses more processing host block data only - NOT EVEN A "NICE TRY", lol - screen YOU SAW @ it's download @ start64.com IS DURING BLOCKLIST PROCESSING dummy & w/ MY PERSONAL HOSTS DATA (much larger than you'll have in a decade++ & it took ME that long to get that much)...apk

  98. It is as good a name as any... by CraigCruden · · Score: 1

    It is about the protection barrier between the kernel data and user space melting down... Meltdown is as good as any other name.

    If some non-techies get the wrong idea -- great -- I can have fun with that .... scaring non-techies with technobabble is always fun. Besides, maybe I can convince my non-technical manager that I need a new computer since my old one melted down before the patch was installed.

  99. Re: Obligatory:Intel CPU Backdoor Report (Jan 1 20 by slashdice · · Score: 1

    Please stop spreading FUD like that. The only safe way to write software is with rust.

    Fact: kernels and user level software written in rust is safe from sphinctr and meltdown attacks. C, C++, even javascript are unsafe. Rust.

    --
    Copyright (c) 1990 - 2014 Dice. All rights reserved. Use of this comment is subject to certain Terms and Conditions.
  100. Re:"I bet they were instructed to ignore the risk" by Tom · · Score: 1

    Because a proper risk evaluation should have shown that this risk was too high to be acceptable.

    Risk can be accepted, there is nothing special about that. When you drive to work in the morning, you implicitly accept the risk of a traffic accident. When a company does business, they accept a lot of risks, because without taking risks you can't do business.

    But you evaluate your risks and rate them and any halfway sane evaluation of this risk would've broken even the most aggressive risk acceptance criteria.

    --
    Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
  101. Downmod hiding proof you lose? LOL! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See subject: Arth1's crushed faulty theory vs REALITY (stopped botnet plus your faulty premise) https://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11532533&cid=55833641/

    Security pros on hosts = good security ahref=https://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11532533&cid=55815915/rel=url2html-5244https://yro.slashdot.org/comme...>

    As do quoted /.ers https://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11573413&cid=55871787/

    Hosts do MORE 4 LESS vs. "so-called 'solutions'" slowing U or soldout (adblock) crippled by default or easily detected & BLOCKED addons or w/ security issues (antivirus/dns/routers) https://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11579085&cid=55885555/

    APK

    P.S.=> You lose & EAT YOUR WORDS - I'll let others judge for themselves (quoted /.ers did above AS DO RESPECTED SECURITY PROS)... apk

  102. Microsoft's handled it excellently thusfar by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Patched Win7's FASTER! I noted it by 'feel' & saw I'm NOT ONLY ONE (formal tests on Win10 though) https://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11574131&cid=55874785/ & everyone KNOWS 10 is slower!

    I prepped for speed-hit (I'll take accuracy & security vs. speed) - but they did what I do in MY work!

    (vs. security issue riddled "so-called 'solutions'" in remote DNS/Antivirus/routers making you slower OR 'souled-out' solutions in addons (adblock crippled to NOT do 1 job (far short of what hosts do for speed/security/reliability))):

    APK Hosts File Engine 10++ SR-1 32/64-bit https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&biw=&bih=&q=%22APK+Hosts+File+Engine%22+and+%22start64%22&btnG=Google+Search&gbv=1/

    APK

    P.S.=> Making you FASTER & SAFER (for less & FOR FREE as I do)... apk

  103. Thank-You very much... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See subject: That lunatic is stalking me all over this forums as you saw & I just blow him away as you said via this https://bsd.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11579585&cid=55888869/ & he freaks out spouting "phantasy theories" I totalled as you saw too with reality by stopping a botnet + destroying his 'idea' easily, lol!

    * The UNIDENTIFIABLE anonymous nutjob doing it is a whacko loon no questions asked - no proof for his ideas but I have VERIFIABLE TONS for mine (/.ers, security pros, fact).

    APK

    P.S.=> He has mental issues, no doubt about it (not even sane enough to admit he lost right off the bat & everytime as all I have to do is show the link above, lol)... apk

  104. CPU replacement or partial refund. by CraigCruden · · Score: 1

    There should be at least some attempt at reparations. Any processor currently being manufactured (3 years or younger) -- you would have the option of opting to get a replacement for the CPU if it is socketed by sending it into Intel (or taking it to a service centre of Intel's choosing to replace) and then getting a fixed CPU (probably timeline at least 9 months). Manufacturers could opt to replace the board at cost with new CPUs for computers that are currently in use. If you opt to keep it you would get a reimbursement of about 25% of the tray price of the CPU - which would be funnelled through manufacturers/retailers.

    I think you would find that a small minority would opt to have the CPU replaced or the board replaced -- costing much less than what might be feared. It would however give the impression that the manufacturer (Intel) stands behind their products.

  105. Sorry retard APK by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Sorry retard APK you can't provide proof.

    So instead Alexander Peter Kowalski posts as AC and doesn't sign it to make it look like he has some support.

    1. Re:Sorry retard APK by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You were asked a question. You avoid it. Answer these 3 queestions. Do slashdot people use much less praise your work? What work is that? Do security pros say your methods work for good security like they do for hosts apk populates for speed and security? I expect answers establishing you are his peer and not some trolling jerk.

  106. Re: Obligatory:Intel CPU Backdoor Report (Jan 1 20 by slashdot_commentator · · Score: 1

    Go is probably safer.

    --
    There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
  107. Bad form APK by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Bad form there APK.

    You really shouldn't post replies to your self to make it look like someone supports you.

    I see you can't actually address any point I made to defend your retard work.

    Also I am not the mentally ill one as I don't post easily refuted lies, threaten people, or go full retard, like Alexander Peter Kowalski does.

    I just point out the fallacies with your statements.

    If I was as dumb as you claim then you shouldn't have any problem providing actual proof to refute my statements but instead the best you can offer is more BS.

    I guess Alexander Peter Kowalski really is the mentally deficient one here.

    Also lots of people like to make fun of you, as evident by the number of troll posts and posts pretending to be you that aren't mine.

    Finally I don't sit there and keep spamming the same posts over and over like the spammer Alexander Peter Kowalski does.

    1. Re:Bad form APK by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Like you posted to yourself against apk on avg using only 17mb exe maybe, services mean more https://bsd.slashdot.org/comme... and he beat you again? Actually to be honest you look very stupid when he points out your mistake that if you keep his program resident to protect hosts it eats much less than avg with a fraction of antivirus slowdown (hosts speed you up a fact) and not anywhere near the vulnerabilities tavis ormandy of google found this year alone avg included. I'd stop and give up if I were you. Apk is ripping you apart the more you post and you make him look great. You don't look good at all but behind anonymous posts like yours you don't care. Are you trying to run apk out of proxies? Good luck Whipslash tried for a year now and can't stop him either.

  108. Re:If OS defect; why not all architectures affecte by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    IBM is releasing firmware, AIX, and Linux updates for POWER systems to address something but they haven't clearly stated if it's for Meltdown, Spectre, or both.

  109. Re:"I bet they were instructed to ignore the risk" by TheRaven64 · · Score: 1

    Intel cheated for performance

    I don't know if you've looked at any processor design since the 386, but they all cheat for performance. 95% of the die area of a modern processor is things that cheat for performance. Most of that is caches, that cheap by pretending that main memory is faster than it really is.

    --
    I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  110. Re:"I bet they were instructed to ignore the risk" by TheRaven64 · · Score: 1

    And I'd be happy too if you were selling me beef at $0.50/pound. Even if you told me you weren't washing out the containers every single time and those sorts of time savings were why the beef were so cheap. Until, of course, it turns out that people weren't washing their hands and failing to wear gloves all the time.

    This isn't some kind of secret thing that Intel does. They announced it with great fanfare in the '90s and had a bunch of tech news articles about how clever it is. None of the people who are now saying 'bad Intel sold me a thing that I didn't know was insecure but they should have done' came forward to say 'no, please don't do this (or at least let us turn it off) because it's probably insecure'. They all said 'Wow, Intel has made system calls cheaper, that's great!'. Including Linus, who I seem to recall complained in the late '90s about how much slower system calls were on AMD than Intel.

    PS - STEALTHMEM: System-Level Protection Against Cache-Based Side Channel Attacks in the Cloud [usenix.org] from 2012 and it sounds like much better performance costs compared to KAISER, although not being a security researcher I have no idea if this would be sufficiently to protest against speculative execution as well.

    STEALTHMEM is a protection against a different kind of timing attack and wouldn't protect against Meltdown or Spectre. A huge family of similar mitigations have been proposed, which partition the cache for different security domains. The problem with all of them is that they lead to inefficient cache usage: if one process is memory bandwidth limited and the other is CPU-bound, then this will slow down the bandwidth-limited process a lot, whereas sharing the cache would let it run faster without slowing down the CPU-bound one.

    In this case, the attacks use a value that is already in the cache to speculatively do something data-dependent that is measurable, letting you determine what that value was even though you shouldn't have access to it. There are a lot of possible side channels that can be used with this general category of attack. The simplest is to do a data-dependent branch to either a location that's in the cache or one that isn't. Alternatively, doing a data-dependent branch to a divide or an add instruction will give you timing data. There are a bunch of Spectre-like attacks that some of the mitigations won't cover.

    --
    I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  111. Not the same by sjbe · · Score: 1

    Nobody can die from this? What about all those workstations and computers in hospitals that run Intel.

    What about them? The odds of this flaw actually resulting in a patient fatality are vanishingly small and there have been ZERO proven instances of harm to any patient of any kind. Compare with numerous known and proven fatalities from Takata airbags. Don't get me wrong, if patients actually are harmed by this it makes it a whole different ballgame but that's simply not what has happened here. You are reaching for hypothetical failure modes that haven't been shown to exist in the real world.

    This is another reason I grow weary of replacing humans with computers. We are dumbing down ourselves and allowing computers to take over every task we deem as mundain.

    An idiotic argument if I ever heard one. If you think computers and automation are a bad thing, I'd suggest slashdot isn't the place for you to hang out. Go find some Amish people to commiserate with.

  112. Re:"I bet they were instructed to ignore the timin by Agripa · · Score: 1

    Sounds like timing is the thing that doesn't need to cross security boundaries. Timing itself can be inferred.

    One of the countermeasures for sandbox environments is to lower the timing resolution but this only lowers the rate at which data can be recovered.

  113. LOL! Thanks for adding another blunder by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See subject & you can't help but fail https://bsd.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11579585&cid=55888429/ & don't bullshit me:

    All you DO is stalk me by UNIDENTIFIABLE anonymous posts you pitiful little "ne'er-do-well" do-nothing loser

    HOWEVER - I like it - you ALWAYS SCREWUP vs. me! ... & when you were asked if you had done a damn thing in computing you had ZERO TO SHOW FOR YOURSELF (but I can by truckloads) - YOU = A HUMAN FAIL - that's YOUR 'equation'

    * RoTfLmAo @ U Mr. erroneous hypothesis based on FAULTY premise (unreality of even trying to create & store 4++ billion hostnames let alone to MANAGE THEM) + tons of other mistakes I point out here https://bsd.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11579585&cid=55885757/ on NoScript (does less wildcard or not), DNS (tons of security issues & uses FAR more vs. hosts & is slower) + security pros & even /.ers quoted supporting me which you say they don't? LMAO - bullshit & I have proof unlike YOUR SORRY ASS (you do-nothing fool).

    APK

    P.S.=> I dusted the hell out of you easily many times shown in links above & you just added yet ANOTHER one in your blunder on memory usage of my program (eats more when processing like any program but NOT when resident (easily 1/4 of total ANY security issue riddled antivirus does in .exe + services & data in memory))... apk

  114. Re:"I bet they were instructed to ignore the risk" by Agripa · · Score: 1

    Nope, AMD pays a higher penalty on system calls, though they mitigate this to some extent by having shorter and narrower pipelines.

    How is that? Checking for permissions before speculation costs hardware and power but not speculating a path which is not going to be used anyway is hardly going to increase latency and saves the power which would otherwise be used and the cost of any memory transactions.

    System calls involve a lot of microcode and other functions so it is not surprising they have a high and different cost between processors.

  115. Re:"I bet they were instructed to ignore the risk" by Agripa · · Score: 1

    That meeting there in late 2013 signalled a sea change at Intel to many of us who were there.

    Well maybe it was, but these problems predate 2013. Guess the "validation" that was happening in the 18 years between 1995 and 2013 didn't amount to much.

    The timeline fits with things Bob Colwell said about changes for the worse in Intel's management just before he left Intel.

  116. Re:"I bet they were instructed to ignore the risk" by Agripa · · Score: 1

    The bug I can understand. I am more upset about Intel's disingenuous PR statements which conflate different exploits making it seem that their main competitor is no better.

    For once I am happy about Intel's excessive market segmentation; it convinced me to go with AMD after the Pentium 4.

  117. Really? by wuemura · · Score: 1

    After Vault 7, is very hard to believe that there is a "bug" that allow someone to pull data out of your CPU without leaving a single trace.

  118. Thanks 4 adding another of your blunders by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    My prog eats more if processing data NOT if resident protecting hosts https://bsd.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11579585&cid=55888429/ (easily 1/4 of security issue riddled antivirus .exe + services, drivers & data in memory)

    Your FAULTY premise trying to create & store 4++ billion hosts https://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11532533&cid=55833641/ FAILS!

    NoScript (does less vs. hosts & inefficiently/redundantly vs. 3rd party script) https://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11549257&cid=55843151/

    DNS (security issues galore & remotely is slower + more complexity for exploit) https://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11579085&cid=55885555//

    APK

    P.S.=> security pros say hosts = good security https://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11549257&cid=55839269/ /.ers quoted support me https://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11573413&cid=55871787/

  119. Thanks 4 adding another of your blunders by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    My prog eats more if processing data NOT if resident protecting hosts https://bsd.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11579585&cid=55888429/ (easily 1/4 of security issue riddled antivirus .exe + services, drivers & data in RAM)

    Your FAULTY premise trying to create & store 4++ billion hosts https://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11532533&cid=55833641/ FAILS!

    NoScript (does less vs. hosts & inefficiently/redundantly vs. 3rd party script) https://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11549257&cid=55843151/

    DNS (security issues galore & remotely is slower + more complexity for exploit) https://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11579085&cid=55885555//

    APK

    P.S.=> security pros say hosts = good security https://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11549257&cid=55839269/ /.ers quoted support me https://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11573413&cid=55871787/

  120. SPARC is immune by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    From ArsTechnica:
    "While Intel systems are the ones known to have the defect, they may not be the only ones affected. Some platforms, such as SPARC and IBM's S390, are immune to the problem, as their processor memory management doesn't need the split address space and shared kernel page tables; operating systems on those platforms have always isolated their kernel page tables from user mode ones."