Meltdown and Spectre Patches Bricking Ubuntu 16.04 Computers (bleepingcomputer.com)

Baby out with the bathwater by Lab+Rat+Jason · 2018-01-10 05:23 · Score: 5, Insightful

It seems that these companies (Microsoft and Ubuntu and others) are forgetting everything about sound software development practices here. They're in such a hurry to deploy patches that they aren't taking the time to fully test them. The cure is worse than the ailment.

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Re:Baby out with the bathwater by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 05:30 · Score: 0

This whole pathetic industry has been caught out. A decades long security theater farce.
Re:Baby out with the bathwater by king+neckbeard · 2018-01-10 05:32 · Score: 5, Insightful

To be fair, there is a major security flaw covering the majority of desktop CPUs sold over the last two decades. You are correct that they have not done proper testing, but this is on a ridiculous scale.

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Re:Baby out with the bathwater by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 05:44 · Score: 0

Yeah, it's a terrible vulnerability, but it's not so bad that you have to brick everything.
All of these spectre exploits require someone to get an executable on your PC first and manage to inject data into a vulnerable process that has some secret data. So is it bad? Yes. But it's not as if suddenly every branch has turned into a buffer overflow, which is what people make it sound like.
Re:Baby out with the bathwater by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 06:00 · Score: 1

Or javascript. Spectre's already got a javascript proof of concept.
Re:Baby out with the bathwater by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 06:07 · Score: 0

So far, there is no known exploitation which makes use of these vulnerabilities in the wild. These are (so far) theoretical flaws. There is reasonable cause to take some time to test these fixes.
Re:Baby out with the bathwater by 110010001000 · 2018-01-10 06:11 · Score: 4, Insightful

When you are connected to the Internet (especially through the web) you have many users of your system. For example, any website you visit can run a Javascript program on your machine. With this flaw it can "break out" of your browser. What a mess.
Re:Baby out with the bathwater by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 06:14 · Score: 0

All of these spectre exploits require someone to get an executable on your PC first and manage to inject data into a vulnerable process that has some secret data.
Yes, but this can happen from sandboxed javascript code; a web page can now own your system.
Re:Baby out with the bathwater by Cajun+Hell · 2018-01-10 06:19 · Score: 2

The rest of the computer users... are almost always the ONLY users (+family) on those computers---so they're implementing this 30% performance penalty to protect users from themselves?
A typical desktop or laptop or tablet computer is no longer truly a single-user computer. Most of these computers have web browsers, which by default are configured to download and execute code written by other people to serve their interests. Perhaps your computers don't do this anymore, but your mom's neighbor's former roommate's computer does. So your mom's neighbor's former roommate's downloads and runs Javascript, which can make an array reference that is speculatively accessed prior to checking the array boundaries.
Your mom's neighbor's former roommate isn't the person who decided to read that memory; it was someone else: an adversary, another user on that multi-user computer. They just happen to log in as your mom's neighbor's former roommate, but it's really a different user.

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Re:Baby out with the bathwater by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 06:29 · Score: 0

Agreed. What are the odds that I'll be the first to fall victim to some new exploit? Meanwhile, the odds are 100% that I'll suffer a noticeable performance hit if I apply the suggested patches.
Of course, I haven't allowed Windows Update to run on my system since Microsoft decided to turn it into a marketing channel, so there was never much danger of being "infected" by a bungled patch.
Re:Baby out with the bathwater by squiggleslash · 2018-01-10 06:57 · Score: 4, Insightful

There are two bugs here:
Meltdown is Intel-only and requires the ability to run binaries on the victim's computer. If you can run binaries on the victim's computer, you probably already have enough access to do whatever it is you want to do that made you want to hack them in the first place. The extent to which Meltdown adds security issues is miniscule.
Spectre is cross platform and can be exploited with Javascript. With difficulty. But it can. Kinda. There's sorta a proof of concept out there. Which works with one JS engine. And doesn't extract any useful information. But in theory if you know the exact status of the user's browser and you're very lucky you might be able to extract some information from it that you wouldn't normally have access to.
So, what is the rush here? Especially with Meltdown?
The entire fucking industry has gone completely nuts. You'd think that we were back in the 1990s with no memory protection and ActiveX given the panic about this.
And before anyone goes "Yeah, but it's still a problem", so are kernel patches that brick computers. We're bricking computers, and slowing down the ones we don't brick, because we're panicking over this rather than doing this properly.

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You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Re:Baby out with the bathwater by ctilsie242 · 2018-01-10 07:00 · Score: 2

With all the crap that runs on a machine, multiple users running at the same time is a must. The days of a cooperative multitasking OS are long gone. You can have a single user OS with preemptive multitasking (OS/2, for example), but you then run into issues where if one item gets infected, the whole machine is pwned. The fact that Windows has UAC has probably stopped/prevented a lot of infections, and is why Microsoft put it in after XP.
Operating systems need not just to be multiuser, but have varying contexts for each user. What is important is that web browsers run untrusted and potentially hostile code 24/7. Even if someone doesn't navigate to a malicious site, an ad server can easily serve up malware (malvertising is one of the biggest attack vectors). Web browser makers do a good job, but ideally, protection should be done by the OS, and even down to the CPU hardware to ensure that stuff running in the browser context does not get out barring authorized ways (downloads, etc.)
Eventually we will be moving to where machines use hypervisors for everything. For Windows 10 Enterprise, with CredentialGuard, that is already the case. Intel and AMD have done great strides (AMD especially with RAM page encryption to keep leaks from one VM from being readable by another), but we have a ways to go to ensure that code in one partition/VM/container cannot affect or see code anywhere else.
Re:Baby out with the bathwater by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 07:10 · Score: 0

Can you share this POC? I keep hearing this "Javascript" example touted but constantly omits the details needed to be convincing.
* These exploits allow reading of protected memory
* Reading is not Writing
It seems you'd need several things to be true for a genuine, no-strings privilege escalation, and even then you can't target anyone specifically. I believe the JS engine itself is a factor (high speed timer implementation, bad out-of-bounds handling, etc)
So lets say you do read protected memory, ferret out the root pass or crypto keys. How does only javascript use this to exploit using only Spectre without a second vulnerability? I'm not saying "this is nothing to worry about" [surely there are a dozen "second avenues"] - but it requires more than just reading protected memory. Rowhammer might work, but it just seems like being getting hold of a VIP pass to an event that you can't attend anyway.
Having a key is great if you A) know where the door is B) have a way to get to it and C) the right kind of articulating limbs to put it into the lock and turn it
Re:Baby out with the bathwater by ewibble · 2018-01-10 07:13 · Score: 0

Javascript can't do that is an interpreted language and checks array bounds, if javascript could do this, with or without these bugs it would be a security flaw in itself.
It is perfectly valid to access your own processes memory. If javascript could access any address then you could capture passwords from other tabs.
Note you can actually access other windows memory if you open it in javascript, but not random memory.
press F12 and type this into the console:
w = window.open('about:blank');
w.document.body.appendChild(w.document.createTextNode('hello world'));
it will put hello world in the other tab.
Javascript is not C or machine code.
Re:Baby out with the bathwater by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 07:15 · Score: 0

Microsoft doesn't test patches, they let their users test them. That's been the practice for at least a decade now.
Re:Baby out with the bathwater by Alumoi · 2018-01-10 07:16 · Score: 1

Why bother with testing when there are a lot of paying beta testers around? Windows 10 anyone?
Re:Baby out with the bathwater by squiggleslash · 2018-01-10 07:17 · Score: 4, Informative

1. No, a web page cannot "own" your system. SPECTRE has a proof of concept that'd allow a Javascript program to be able to read data in the same process. It's almost impossible to exploit, but, sure, if you can, you might possibly find that downloading a rogue JS file could copy your bank website's session cookie, if you're not running a recent version of Firefox or Chrome. But nothing SPECTRE allows will allow your computer to be modified in any way.
2. The discussion here is about kernel patches, which are related to MELTDOWN, not SPECTRE. Meltdown cannot be exploited using Javascript. It requires binaries. If you don't run AWS style services, then your current level of security is unlikely to be made worse by Meltdown. And like SPECTRE, MELTDOWN is read only, although in theory it could leak passwords that could allow someone else to hack into your system if it's not properly firewalled.

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You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Re:Baby out with the bathwater by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 07:23 · Score: 0

And a stone will most likely break your window. But most people don't flood their apartment with concrete just to counter that one attack vector.
Re:Baby out with the bathwater by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 07:25 · Score: 0

Having a key is great if you A) know where the door is B) have a way to get to it and C) the right kind of articulating limbs to put it into the lock and turn it
A) Any number of secure services (networks, websites, etc.).
B) Information stolen via Spectre.
C) An internet connection.
Even if you can't escalate privileges on as part of the Spectre exploit, you may still be able to gain enough information using only Spectre to exploit other systems or access the original system by other means without any further exploits.
Moreover, you are kind of assuming that some "second exploit" must remain to be discovered. The other possibility is that there is a backlog of potential exploits that became workable the day that Spectre was identified.
Re:Baby out with the bathwater by Hal_Porter · 2018-01-10 07:25 · Score: 1

To be fair it must be a nightmare to fix something like this so the fix works on a wide variety of configurations and doesn't kill performance on any of them. Especially if news of the exploit gets leaked or discovered independently.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

On March 27, 2017 researchers at Austria's Graz University of Technology developed a proof-of-concept that could grab RSA keys from Intel SGX enclaves running on the same system within five minutes by using certain CPU instructions in lieu of a fine-grained timer to exploit cache DRAM side-channels.
In June 2017, KASLR was found to have a large class of new vulnerabilities. Research at Graz University showed how to solve these vulnerabilities by preventing all access to unauthorized pages. A presentation on the resulting KAISER technique was submitted for the Black Hat congress in July 2017, but was rejected by the organizers. Nevertheless, this work led to kernel page-table isolation (KPTI, originally known as KAISER) in 2017, which was confirmed to eliminate a large class of security bugs, including the not-yet-discovered Meltdown - a fact confirmed by the Meltdown authors.
In July 2017, research made public on the CyberWTF website by security researcher Anders Fogh outlined the use of a cache timing attack to read kernel space data by observing the results of speculative operations conditioned on data fetched with invalid privileges.
Meltdown was discovered independently by Jann Horn from Google's Project Zero, Werner Haas and Thomas Prescher from Cyberus Technology, as well as Daniel Gruss, Moritz Lipp, Stefan Mangard and Michael Schwarz from Graz University of Technology. The same research teams that discovered Meltdown also discovered a related CPU security vulnerability now called Spectre.
On October 2017, Kernel ASLR support on amd64 was added in NetBSD-current, making NetBSD the first BSD system to support kernel address space layout randomization (KASLR).
On November 14, 2017, security researcher Alex Ionescu publicly mentioned changes in the new version of Windows 10 that would cause some speed degradation without explaining the necessity for the changes, just referring to similar changes in Linux.
After affected hardware and software vendors had been made aware of the issue on July 28, 2017, the two vulnerabilities were made public jointly, on January 3, 2018, several days ahead of the coordinated release date of January 9, 2018 as news sites started reporting about commits to the Linux kernel and mails to its mailing list. As a result, patches were not available for some platforms, such as Ubuntu, when the vulnerabilities were disclosed.

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Re:Baby out with the bathwater by chill · 2018-01-10 07:44 · Score: 4, Insightful

Meltdown is Intel-only and requires the ability to run binaries on the victim's computer. If you can run binaries on the victim's computer, you probably already have enough access to do whatever it is you want to do that made you want to hack them in the first place. The extent to which Meltdown adds security issues is miniscule.
That isn't really accurate. Meltdown is potentially devastating for virtual machines and set-ups like shared hosting. Getting a VM slice on a much larger machine is where Meltdown scares cloud-deployed companies. Spin up a small VM, execute Meltdown exploit, and compromise who else is on that host. Ditto with a shared web host.

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Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Re:Baby out with the bathwater by thegarbz · 2018-01-10 07:46 · Score: 2, Insightful

In a controlled environment or on a system that you already 0wn that would be a problem. However if I go to a website right now there's no reliable way of accessing a desired chunk of memory from another process without knowing where that memory is in the first place or without dumping absolutely everything and manually looking afterwards.
I.e. Yes javascript can read what it wants due to this bug, but good luck trying to get it to read what *you* want like the running encryption key.
This attack would work well for an NSA attempting to extract encryption keys style attack, but does bugger all for a script kiddie with a bit of javascript.
Re:Baby out with the bathwater by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 07:55 · Score: 1

Meltdown is Intel-only and requires the ability to run binaries on the victim's computer. If you can run binaries on the victim's computer, you probably already have enough access to do whatever it is you want to do that made you want to hack them in the first place. The extent to which Meltdown adds security issues is miniscule.
That isn't really accurate. Meltdown is potentially devastating for virtual machines and set-ups like shared hosting. Getting a VM slice on a much larger machine is where Meltdown scares cloud-deployed companies. Spin up a small VM, execute Meltdown exploit, and compromise who else is on that host. Ditto with a shared web host.
You don't know how Meltdown works or it's impact. Meltdown uses the fact that Intel doesn't properly check the supervisor bit in page-tables during speculative execution and erroneously modifies the cache and doesn't roll it back before rolling back registers. Hypervisors doesn't share page-tables that way so the doesn't apply.
Re:Baby out with the bathwater by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 07:56 · Score: 1

Do you have any reading comprehension? Firstly, meltdown affects some ARM processors too and is NOT just Intel-only. Secondly, these machines aren't bricked, the headlines are just using fun words that aren't accurate. Especially people on /. should use the correct terminology.
Re:Baby out with the bathwater by Merk42 · 2018-01-10 07:59 · Score: 5, Funny

You know what's pushing this on the average Joe? DRM. Microsoft can't let those DRM keys leak... and now that the flaw is known, that's exactly what *could* happen. This isn't about user's data falling into evil-hacker's hands...
Ah Slashdot, where a vulnerability from Intel and a bad patch from Canonical, is still, somehow, Microsoft's fault.
Re:Baby out with the bathwater by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 08:10 · Score: 1

> "We're bricking computers, and slowing down the ones we don't brick, because we're panicking over this rather than doing this properly."
The article linked by OP says that it is bricking but a fix is to simply rollback the kernel. That is NOT a brick in any sense of the word. This is people overreacting and making false claims. If you can continue to use a device in ANYWAY at all much less simply rolling back the kernel version, it is absolutely not a bricking. Besides, that "NOT A BRICK" problem has already been fixed by Ubuntu and is already pushed out to users.
Re:Baby out with the bathwater by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 08:22 · Score: 0

I agree with you, there's been too much emphasis placed on home users, which are unlikely to be affected.
What I'd expect to be a much, much larger problem that I've seen very little in print about is virtualization. You definitely have the ability to execute arbirtrary code on a virtualized machine. Seeing another VM's, or the kernels memory could be a huge problem for anyone running in a shared environment, which is just about everyone these days.
Re:Baby out with the bathwater by cyn1c77 · 2018-01-10 08:29 · Score: 1

It seems that these companies (Microsoft and Ubuntu and others) are forgetting everything about sound software development practices here. They're in such a hurry to deploy patches that they aren't taking the time to fully test them. The cure is worse than the ailment.
Is it really that they are forgetting or do they just not care?
Re:Baby out with the bathwater by ChunderDownunder · 2018-01-10 08:33 · Score: 1

That sounds like a pretty crappy sandbox.
NB: Mozilla released a security update for Firefox already.
Re:Baby out with the bathwater by mysidia · 2018-01-10 08:39 · Score: 3, Informative

I.e. Yes javascript can read what it wants due to this bug, but good luck trying to get it to read what *you* want like the running encryption key.
Brute force read using an entropy estimation algorithm until you find an "interesting" blob of memory.
Once you find an interesting blob of memory start checking if that memory could be a valid secret key.
Re:Baby out with the bathwater by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 08:45 · Score: 0

Please shut the fuck up.
Re:Baby out with the bathwater by SeaFox · 2018-01-10 08:49 · Score: 1

To be fair, there is a major security flaw covering the majority of desktop CPUs sold over the last two decades.
It's been around for two decades, and known about for years based on earlier reports, and the world did not some to an end during that time. Taking a few months for proper testing before deploying isn't going to be an issue.
People don't install Ubuntu to be on the bleeding edge.
Re: Baby out with the bathwater by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 08:52 · Score: 0

You make it sound like with meltdown, the leaked data is simply read from a register, which is not true.
The data is leaked by inference only, with a side channel attack that times data accesses to infer a cached location. The results of the illegal memory access are thrown away.
Basically the processor is asked to read a value from memory, access it as an address , and all that happens specutively. Another thread times accesses to a range of addresses and the one that is apparently cached already is the one the processor r gently accessed from the first thread.
Itâ(TM)s a much bigger problem in general than people are making it out to be. The side channel attacks, this is just the beginning.
Re:Baby out with the bathwater by mysidia · 2018-01-10 08:54 · Score: 4, Informative

JavaScript CAN do this by inferring the memory values through the side-channel, first of all because JavaScript is assembled into machine language (Just-in-Time compilation). Did you see the Javascript POC for Spectre?
LISTING 2: Exploiting Speculative Execution via JavaScript

1 if (index < simpleByteArray.length) {
2 index = simpleByteArray[index | 0];
3 index = (((index * TABLE1_STRIDE)|0) & (TABLE1_BYTES-1))|0;
4 localJunk ^= probeTable[index|0]|0;
5 }
... To obtain the x86 disassembly of the JIT output during development, the command-line tool D8 was used.
Manual tweaking of the source code leading up to the snippet above was done to get the value of
simpleByteArray.length in local memory (instead of cached in a register or requiring multiple instructions to
fetch). See Listing 3 for the resulting disassembly output from D8 (which uses AT&T assembly syntax).
The clflush instruction is not accessible from JavaScript, so cache flushing was performed by reading
a series of addresses at 4096-byte intervals out of a large array. Because of the memory and cache
configuration on Intel processors, a series of 2000 such reads (depending on the processor’s
cache size) were adequate evict out the data from the processor’s caches for addresses having
the same value in address bits 11–6 [38]. The leaked results are conveyed via the cache status
of probeTable[n*4096] for n 0..255, so each attempt begins with a flushing pass consisting
of a series of reads made from probeTable[n*4096] using values of n > 256.

LISTING 3: Disassembly of Listing 2
1 cmpl r15,[rbp-0xe0] ; Compare index (r15) against simpleByteArray.length
2 jnc 0x24dd099bb870 ; If index >= length, branch to instruction after movq below
3 REX.W leaq rsi,[r12+rdx*1] ; Set rsi=r12+rdx=addr of first byte in simpleByteArray
4 movzxbl rsi,[rsi+r15*1] ; Read byte from address rsi+r15 (= base address+index)
5 shll rsi, 12 ; Multiply rsi by 4096 by shifting left 12 bits}\%\
6 andl rsi,0x1ffffff ; AND reassures JIT that next operation is in-bounds
7 movzxbl rsi,[rsi+r8*1] ; Read from probeTable
8 xorl rsi,rdi ; XOR the read result onto localJunk
9 REX.W movq rdi,rsi ; Copy localJunk into rdi
Re:Baby out with the bathwater by Cajun+Hell · 2018-01-10 08:57 · Score: 2

Javascript can't do that is an interpreted language and checks array bounds, if javascript could do this, with or without these bugs it would be a security flaw in itself.
...
Javascript is not C or machine code.
This is common sense and it's what I used to believe too. I totally don't fault you for thinking that.
Now I direct you to section 4.3 of the Spectre paper. You need to read it. This isn't about "you're wrong," it's about "here's something very interesting."
And if you're anything like me, you will be stunned by Listing 3, where it shows the incredible job Chrome did, to compile Javascript to machine code. I had no idea.

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"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Re:Baby out with the bathwater by Technomancer · 2018-01-10 08:58 · Score: 1

Except when it is. Javascript is very often compiled with JIT to machine code and there exist Spectre exploits that can read whole browser process memory from Javascript. It needs high precision timers and JIT, but it works. Thats why MS in their Spectre mitigation for Edge reduces timer precision and introduces extra jitter.
Re:Baby out with the bathwater by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 09:00 · Score: 0

Reading can be a very serious problem. Think encryption keys, passwords. They can then use that to gain access for writing and execution.
Re:Baby out with the bathwater by Eravnrekaree · 2018-01-10 09:04 · Score: 4, Informative

Meltdown is easier to exploit, The hacks will get better as well. So it is a very serious problem, information leaks can be very harmful, think passwords and encryption keys. These can then allow for write attacks. Don't underestimate the capabilities of people to find ways to exploit this. It may seem far fetched but time and time again far fetched things have a way of being turned into quite practical exploits.
Re:Baby out with the bathwater by npslider · 2018-01-10 09:11 · Score: 1

No, they will login as your father’s brother’s nephew’s cousin’s former roommate. Which will give them access to absolutely nothing related to you. ;)
Re:Baby out with the bathwater by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 09:24 · Score: 0

Thanks squiggleslash. I feel much better now.
A rogue JS in my browser can potentially allow someone to empty my bank account. Thank God they cannot modify my computer in any way.
Re:Baby out with the bathwater by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 09:29 · Score: 0

This is the biggest understatement of Meltdown I've seen so far. The current demo programs can read out any program memory, including passwords, images, etc. from another user or privileged processes.
Re: Baby out with the bathwater by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 09:33 · Score: 0

I can't believe someone is sitting here trying to say that unfettered read access to all of kernal memory really isn't a security problem. Seriously?
Re:Baby out with the bathwater by ewibble · 2018-01-10 09:34 · Score: 1

I have read the white paper and now think I understand,
You are not doing an out of bounds memory access at all, what you are doing is making the predictive out of bounds check, that gets loaded into in bounds memory
the only thing that is an issue is getting an accurate enough time, if your machine is fast enough might not work, window.performance.now()
Re:Baby out with the bathwater by bloodhawk · 2018-01-10 09:48 · Score: 1

The reality is their are hundreds of thousands if not millions of hardware and software combinations, no company or OSS provider can come even close to testing it all for such a significant system change. All they can do is make a best effort.
Re: Baby out with the bathwater by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 10:20 · Score: 0

Only someone totally clueless or an Intel troll would state this.
Re: Baby out with the bathwater by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 10:27 · Score: 0

Or someone emotionally invested in the idea that all commercial software developers are idiots because ...
Re:Baby out with the bathwater by Anne+Thwacks · 2018-01-10 10:36 · Score: 1

All they can do is make a best effort.
No: it would appear the standard alternative to a best effort is to make a fairly pathetic, half-assed effort.

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Re:Baby out with the bathwater by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 10:50 · Score: 0

How the fuck did this get modded up to 4?
This does not allow Javascript to break out of the browser. That is absolute bollocks.
Re:Baby out with the bathwater by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 11:04 · Score: 0

Well it wasn't Intel that escalated this issue to 'catastrophe' level, that pressure was put on by other parties.
Intel apparently knew about the issue for some time before the panic was kicked into top gear.
Re:Baby out with the bathwater by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 11:15 · Score: 0

Right... and that will be sitting in memory with a descriptor will it?
PASSWORD="1234"
Sure.
The access to passwords is mostly a theoretical possibility. If you get a chunk of binary data from memory you still have to work out what the fuck you just retrieved and how it's contents are formatted. Stop over reacting to all the scary headlines.
Re:Baby out with the bathwater by vivian · 2018-01-10 11:37 · Score: 1

I prefer a car analogy - it's like finding out that you can unlock a car door with a screwdriver, and the patch to fix it welds the door shut.
Re:Baby out with the bathwater by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 12:00 · Score: 0

Man....thank you. I couldnt figure out why I didn't really give a shit about OOOOH...sssssSSPECTER
JAVASCRIPT GONNA GETCHA! oh no!
But now I realise I just dont use a computer for anything I care about.
Feels good.
Re:Baby out with the bathwater by sjames · 2018-01-10 14:38 · Score: 1

If you're running on a VM in the cloud, it's not that hard for someone else to run an executable (in their own VM) on the same server. Meltdown can cross VMs.
That's why the big rush to a workaround patch.
Re:Baby out with the bathwater by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 15:20 · Score: 0

Meltdown is Intel-only
ARM Cortex-A75 too and a few obscure things too.
Re:Baby out with the bathwater by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 15:24 · Score: 0

They're in such a hurry to deploy patches
Ubuntu was nearly a week slower than RedHat and Amazon at getting patches out. Their hurry wasn't very good.
Re:Baby out with the bathwater by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 16:19 · Score: 0

Flaw?! It was a feature that matched specifications born of requirements. Full-scale penetration/control was/is their mission.
We've known about the IME for YEARS!
Re:Baby out with the bathwater by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 16:31 · Score: 0

so 99.9%+ have no problems but you still consider that a pathetic attempt. Given the scale of the problem and the sheer volume of hardware and software affected I would say so far it has been amazingly successful patching and testing from both commercial and OSS vendors.
Re:Baby out with the bathwater by hcs_$reboot · 2018-01-10 17:04 · Score: 1

Ubuntu case is different. 16.04 is LTS and is supposed to be supported until 2021. In reality, when something is fixed in the latest version (17.10) that could be fixed in 16.04 as well, that's not always the case. And today these patches prove that even security fixes are botched on an older 16.04 version.

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Re:Baby out with the bathwater by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 18:15 · Score: 0

"Taking a few months for proper testing before deploying " They may have taken this path if the exploits had not been publically disclosed. I don't think any company can withstand the never ending complaints and predictions of doom that publishing the exploits generated. The mob needed to see that their irrational and overblown fears were being were being immediately addressed so they could stop stamping their feet and move on to their next outrage.
Re:Baby out with the bathwater by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 19:50 · Score: 0

Where are my mod points? :(
I'll come back if and when I get some today.
Re: Baby out with the bathwater by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 20:14 · Score: 0

Intel shills are the shilliest shills.
Re:Baby out with the bathwater by OneAhead · 2018-01-10 20:25 · Score: 1

"Major security flaw" is relative. IMHO, the kernel component of the recent speculative execution flaws doesn't come close to heartbleed, shellshock or even krack in terms of being an imminent thread to online safety. It's more in the league of a local privillege escalation, of which close to a dozen get patched per year in the average distro. Sure, it's serious and needs to be patched ASAP, but the sky won't come falling down because of spending a couple more days testing the patches on different machines.
I speculate (obligatory pun) that this panicky response is more driven by be the fear that a major cloud vendor will switch to the competition.
Re:Baby out with the bathwater by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-11 13:42 · Score: 0

So it justifies bricking the LTS version? The likely server release people are using? You'd hope that would be the one variant that was properly tested.
Re:Baby out with the bathwater by sjames · 2018-01-11 15:42 · Score: 1

I was just pointing out that this isn't the big nothing squiggleslash was claiming. The problem is real and the exploit is practical in several very large environments.
People not in those environments probably should have had a better way to sit back a few days and wait for bug reports.

Running this very thing in AWS right now by swan5566 · 2018-01-10 05:24 · Score: 0

...haven't had any issues.

--
In debates about Christianity, there are two groups: those looking for answers, and those looking to just ask questions.

Re:Running this very thing in AWS right now by moogied · 2018-01-10 05:25 · Score: 1

Running something on a hypervisor is not the same as running it on bare metal.

--
So basically, -1 troll/offtopic is really slashdots way of saying "I hate that you thought of something before me."
Re:Running this very thing in AWS right now by retchdog · 2018-01-10 05:35 · Score: 0

yeah, the article fails to mention what proportion of upgraders were affected. if it's 1%, that's to be expected for a patch of this magnitude. if it's 10%, that's bad; if it's 100%, it's a catastrophe.

--
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
Re:Running this very thing in AWS right now by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 05:46 · Score: 0

How does deploying this in the guest level achieve anything? Can't another tenant on the same physical host still read all of YOUR data? It must be applied to the host system.
Re:Running this very thing in AWS right now by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 06:32 · Score: 0

Running 16.04LTS on 2 machines... no problems for either. Both are i7s. FWIW.
Re: Running this very thing in AWS right now by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 07:08 · Score: 0

AWS patched all their systems last year.
Re:Running this very thing in AWS right now by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 15:32 · Score: 0

Why not run a real production OS in AWS, like the ones that got patched last Wednesday?
Re:Running this very thing in AWS right now by fizzer06 · 2018-01-10 15:34 · Score: 1

uname -a
******* 4.13.0-26-generic #29~16.04.2-Ubuntu SMP Tue Jan 9 22:00:44 UTC 2018 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
My CPU is: Intel Core i3-2120 CPU @ 3.30Ghz
Updated my Linux Mint 18.3 Cinnamon 64 bit this afternoon and all is well after reboot.
Ran sysbench tests on CPU and File IO before and after and noticed no difference.

Bricked!!?!?! Oh wow! by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 05:27 · Score: 5, Insightful

"have been forced to roll back to an earlier Linux kernel image."

So, not actually bricked then...

WORDS MEAN THINGS!

Re:Bricked!!?!?! Oh wow! by Antiocheian · 2018-01-10 05:38 · Score: 1

Not even close. A bricked system is useless, unless some software or hardware hack -- not standard recovery procedures -- can restore it.
Re:Bricked!!?!?! Oh wow! by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 05:49 · Score: 1

Not even close. A bricked system is useless, unless some software or hardware hack -- not standard recovery procedures -- can restore it.
Rollback to 4.4.0-104 until 4.4.0-109 was released is not a "standard recovery procedure"?
Re:Bricked!!?!?! Oh wow! by AvitarX · 2018-01-10 05:50 · Score: 5, Interesting

Doesn't this just mean pressing down in grub once, then setting it to use that kernel by default?
This is barely even a slight annoyance.

--
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Re:Bricked!!?!?! Oh wow! by El_Muerte_TDS · 2018-01-10 05:51 · Score: 5, Funny

It's 2018, we have SmartBricks now. You can change the software of your SmartBricks.
Re:Bricked!!?!?! Oh wow! by billyoc903 · 2018-01-10 05:55 · Score: 4, Insightful

Yeah, but who's going to click on a link that says "Ubuntu kernels rolled back to the one from the day before yesterday"? Do you know ANYTHING about social media marketing strategies? It's like you're not even trying.
Re:Bricked!!?!?! Oh wow! by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 06:00 · Score: 0

Listen, when Microsoft did it, it was bricking. But because Linux is doing it...it's....okay?
Re:Bricked!!?!?! Oh wow! by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 06:03 · Score: 0

Duh. Linux is perfect and never has bugs. Anything labeled a bug is just Microsoft FUD.
Re:Bricked!!?!?! Oh wow! by ThanatosMinor · 2018-01-10 06:04 · Score: 5, Funny

Article title updated because we used the term "bricking" incorrectly. Bleeping Computer regrets the error.
We apologise for the fault in the title. Those responsible have been sacked.
Re:Bricked!!?!?! Oh wow! by GameboyRMH · 2018-01-10 06:08 · Score: 5, Insightful

I would say that if a software hack, or even a simple hardware hack with common tools can fix it, it's not bricked. If you have to get out a JTAG adapter, then it's bricked.

--
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Re:Bricked!!?!?! Oh wow! by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 06:09 · Score: 2, Insightful

No when Microsoft did it, it was not bricking. Several people even pointed it out in the very comments of that Slashdot article.
On the other hand, you have selective memory or didn't even bother to check, because your are a Microsoft fanboi/shill.
Re:Bricked!!?!?! Oh wow! by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 06:13 · Score: 0

Wait, I don't know if we're speaking the same language. Just to be sure... were they 1) fired, 2) actually put into a sack, or 3) some other proprietary meaning of the word sacked?
Re:Bricked!!?!?! Oh wow! by celeb8 · 2018-01-10 06:15 · Score: 2

YES THANK YOU came here to post this
Re:Bricked!!?!?! Oh wow! by religionofpeas · 2018-01-10 06:16 · Score: 5, Funny

We apologise for the fault in the title. Those responsible have been sacked.
You mean, they've been bricked.
Re:Bricked!!?!?! Oh wow! by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 06:18 · Score: 0

Someone put their nut sack on the offenders chin and gave him a liquidy Cleveland steamer.
Re:Bricked!!?!?! Oh wow! by fibonacci8 · 2018-01-10 06:21 · Score: 4, Funny

We apologise for the fault in the title. Those responsible have been sacked.
You mean, they've been bricked.
A brick once bit my sister.

--
Inheritance is the sincerest form of nepotism.
Re:Bricked!!?!?! Oh wow! by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 06:21 · Score: 0

WORDS MEAN THINGS!
Not since before the Clinton administration. The meaning of words became more flexible then.
Re:Bricked!!?!?! Oh wow! by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 06:24 · Score: 0

Bill Clinton hasn’t been in office for 17 years. Get over it already snowflake.
Re:Bricked!!?!?! Oh wow! by Cajun+Hell · 2018-01-10 06:27 · Score: 1

It's still in the Slashdot article title. Those responsible for bricking should be bricked.

--
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Re:Bricked!!?!?! Oh wow! by k.a.f. · 2018-01-10 06:27 · Score: 5, Informative

Close, but no cigar. When you have to throw the device away, then it's bricked.
Re:Bricked!!?!?! Oh wow! by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 06:40 · Score: 0

Thank you!
god damn.
Re:Bricked!!?!?! Oh wow! by rla3rd · 2018-01-10 06:44 · Score: 2

Those responsible for sacking those have been sacked have been sacked.
Re:Bricked!!?!?! Oh wow! by TeknoHog · 2018-01-10 06:50 · Score: 1

Most people wouldn't know about JTAG. Bricking could mean different things to different people. I don't usually throw entire devices away because there are always some working components you can salvage. Still, I think it's safe to say that if you can reinstall the OS the usual way, it's definitely not bricked.

--
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Re:Bricked!!?!?! Oh wow! by greenwow · 2018-01-10 06:51 · Score: 1

That depends on what your definition of meaning means.
Re:Bricked!!?!?! Oh wow! by ctilsie242 · 2018-01-10 07:11 · Score: 1

Exactly. If the kernel scrambled the UEFI files or hosed the firmware beyond recovery, that is a bricking. Having to boot from an earlier kernel in GRUB2... well, that is just an "oh shit", like anything else on the OS side. Definitely not good, but it doesn't mean that you have to buy a new motherboard.
I think part of the confusion come in with a lot of appliances blurring the line between BIOS and OS, combined with the lack of control of the OS. A kernel panic on a phone preventing it from starting could be a "bricking", especially if there is no way to boot a recovery ROM. However, on desktop/server PCs, we still have the option (for now...) to go back to a previous kernel.
Re:Bricked!!?!?! Oh wow! by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 07:15 · Score: 0

And "brick" means "break."
The technical distinction you are imposing on the word, though correct, it unimportant to the majority of English-speakers. English is a majority-rules language, so the word is merely a simple synonym for "break" in common parlance.
I realize you hate this. But there is nothing you can do about it.
Re: Bricked!!?!?! Oh wow! by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 07:16 · Score: 0

Yes. Hold shift during boot if you don't see the grub menu (if it's hidden).
Re: Bricked!!?!?! Oh wow! by AvitarX · 2018-01-10 07:39 · Score: 1

I guess that's a slight annoyance if it doesn't display for a couple seconds during boot.

--
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Re:Bricked!!?!?! Oh wow! by viperidaenz · 2018-01-10 07:48 · Score: 4, Funny

Nah, if you have to press a key during the boot process to bring up a boot menu and select the previous kernel, then it's bricked.
Re:Bricked!!?!?! Oh wow! by thegarbz · 2018-01-10 07:48 · Score: 1

No, when an end user can't bring the device back to life without spending money going out and buying a JTAG programmer, THEN it is bricked.
If the software problem can't be recovered from the software domain it is bricked. Just because the manufacturer can revive it doesn't make it any less bricked.
Re:Bricked!!?!?! Oh wow! by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 08:00 · Score: 0

Yeah... and not to mention... wouldn't using the kernel parameter "pti=off" allow to boot without having to roll back the Kernel?
Re:Bricked!!?!?! Oh wow! by innocent_white_lamb · 2018-01-10 08:05 · Score: 1

If you're running a remote machine hundreds of miles away from your own location, or one without a keyboard/monitor on top of an inaccessible rack, then it's more than a slight annoyance. Tell the guy who can no longer log into the remote computer that he just rebooted how slightly he's annoyed.

--
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
Re:Bricked!!?!?! Oh wow! by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 08:18 · Score: 0

Doesn't this just mean pressing down in grub once, then setting it to use that kernel by default?
This is barely even a slight annoyance.
I help manage over a thousand computers and this affected some of them. Some have very small hard drives ( i.e. 16gb memory cards ) and the hard drives fill up, partly due to old kernels, so we auto-delete old kernels after booting a new one. Luckily we have a grub option to do a full auto reinstall from a saved image on the first partition of the hard drive, but we had to get someone on the phone to hit ESC , arrow down, enter a password, and then wait up to a few hours for the system to get restored and re-updated.
Obviously "bricked" is a horribly wrong term and the headline should be changed unless they are just trying to be generate hits and sell more advertising, but this is not a "slight annoyance" .
I've never needed to roll back a kernel update before on production machines, maybe we have to start keeping at least 2 kernels. Even so, booting to an old kernel is still a major problem when you have to manually hit keys on hundreds of remote systems.
Re:Bricked!!?!?! Oh wow! by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 08:22 · Score: 0

Checked slashdot comments, scrolled to find the inevitable pedant bitching about the word "brick", left satisfied.
Never change, Slashdot. Never change.
Re:Bricked!!?!?! Oh wow! by AvitarX · 2018-01-10 08:37 · Score: 1

Fair point.
It'd be nice if it could fall back to a last known good config like on Windows (not that that ever works, but the way Ubuntu seems to keep old ones seems like it could be made to work).

--
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Re:Bricked!!?!?! Oh wow! by eneville · 2018-01-10 09:01 · Score: 2

Fair point.
It'd be nice if it could fall back to a last known good config like on Windows (not that that ever works, but the way Ubuntu seems to keep old ones seems like it could be made to work).
Exactly. The headline is rubbish. Part of the kernel installation is to leave the last one in the menu. It's just the new one is a default. If grub is configured with 'savedefault', then the last picked kernel will be chosen for future boots.

--
Why UNIX?
Re:Bricked!!?!?! Oh wow! by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 09:12 · Score: 0

If it's mission critical and hundreds of miles away, IPMI...
Re:Bricked!!?!?! Oh wow! by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 10:02 · Score: 0

That is why every company that has computers in a rack pays a little extra to be able to remote manage those computers even if they are turned off.
Just log into the ILO (Integrated Lights Out as HP calls it) with ssh, do power off, then power on, then start the virtual-serial-port and you wait until grub shows up and select the old image, done.
Re:Bricked!!?!?! Oh wow! by dmesg0 · 2018-01-10 10:32 · Score: 3, Informative

People who run remote machines usually have a way to remotely access the console (e.g. IPMI serial-over-lan, terminal server, virtual KVM, VM instance console etc).
The only exception is the retarded Amazon AWS which still doesn't have an interactive console. If AWS instance doesn't boot you have to mount its storage elsewhere to fix it or restore from a snapshot (really a lot of trouble).
Re:Bricked!!?!?! Oh wow! by Anne+Thwacks · 2018-01-10 10:40 · Score: 1

if you have to press a key during the boot process to bring up a boot menu and select the previous kernel, then it's bricked.
No. That is trashed, but not bricked. Bricked is when it is not recoverable by means available to members of the general public - not just "stupid Lusers". Bricked is not just when it won't boot a bootable image, but when it does not even appear to try.

--
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Re:Bricked!!?!?! Oh wow! by Anne+Thwacks · 2018-01-10 10:44 · Score: 1

In words of one syllable: NO. Brick is not a synonym for break in English (except maybe in your house), and most definitely not in relation to computer systems.
YMMV

--
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Re:Bricked!!?!?! Oh wow! by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 10:44 · Score: 0

Those responsible for sacking the people who have just been sacked have been sacked
Re:Bricked!!?!?! Oh wow! by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 11:14 · Score: 1

"Bricked" literally means to use it as window key, door stop or boat anchor. If something is "Bricked" then that is ALL it is good for.
Re:Bricked!!?!?! Oh wow! by viperidaenz · 2018-01-10 11:14 · Score: 1

I must have forgot the </sarcasm>
Re:Bricked!!?!?! Oh wow! by LesFerg · 2018-01-10 11:22 · Score: 1

That was mean

--
If I had a DeLorean... I would probably only drive it from time to time.
Re:Bricked!!?!?! Oh wow! by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 11:39 · Score: 0

Bill Clinton hasn’t been in office for 17 years. Get over it already snowflake.
He legacy lives on in the language and in the culture of sexual harassment of subordinates.
Re:Bricked!!?!?! Oh wow! by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 11:45 · Score: 0

Last I used it, Ubuntu made it difficult to get to the grub menu - you know, to make it "easier".
Re: Bricked!!?!?! Oh wow! by sirv · 2018-01-10 12:03 · Score: 0

yep. slashdot is doing clickbait lately. false news.
Re: Bricked!!?!?! Oh wow! by sirv · 2018-01-10 12:06 · Score: 0

no u did not forget. it was a woman who replied to u.
Re:Bricked!!?!?! Oh wow! by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 12:42 · Score: 0

My Dog Bit Jesus
Re:Bricked!!?!?! Oh wow! by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 12:43 · Score: 0

no, really
Re: Bricked!!?!?! Oh wow! by Monster_user · 2018-01-10 13:44 · Score: 1

That requires advanced knowledge. Selecting a previous kernel is fairly intuitive, and fairly simple. The menus are usually displayed or otherwise made apparent to even the more novice users. Grub boot parameters, particularly those which resulted from changes to the kernel, and this are either new, or their impact is new, are typically not presented nor explained to a user by a b0rked machine.
Re:Bricked!!?!?! Oh wow! by Hognoxious · 2018-01-10 15:33 · Score: 1

However, on desktop/server PCs, we still have the option (for now...) to go back to a previous kernel.
Shhh! Lennart might be lurking.

--
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Re:Bricked!!?!?! Oh wow! by Waccoon · 2018-01-10 19:58 · Score: 1

By that reasoning, only [effective] kill switches or DRM will brick a device. Remarkably, most devices these days can still be repaired with a hot air gun.
Re:Bricked!!?!?! Oh wow! by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 21:59 · Score: 0

You are being too literal. There is always the option of replacing (soldering skills may be required) the part (usually some kind of memory chip) that contains the bad data, and unless we are talking about an EPROM or some kind of DRM chip, there is usually a way to overwrite the bad data with good once you have the chip out.
If the chip in question has a JTAG interface, that's pretty much guaranteed to allow unbricking.
Bricking is usually a broken firmware update, for a PC this would be a BIOS update (on systems that don't have dual-BIOS). But it does by definition not include a broken OS update, the BIOS will still allow booting from a different drive.
Re: Bricked!!?!?! Oh wow! by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 22:24 · Score: 0

Agree. It is not bricked if you can install a new OS on it. Per a previous comment, âoebrickedâ means itâ(TM)s now a door stop and unusable as designed.
Re:Bricked!!?!?! Oh wow! by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-11 05:17 · Score: 0

Yeah, but who's going to click on a link that says "Ubuntu kernels rolled back to the one from the day before yesterday"? Do you know ANYTHING about social media marketing strategies? It's like you're not even trying.
Then perhaps the article is poorly thought out, doesn't need to be the lead story, or just has a flawed premise. (In this case, I'm rooting for "poorly thought out")

More bricking... by Lunix+Nutcase · 2018-01-10 05:28 · Score: 0

Canonical sure loves bricking computers with Ubuntu these days. Did Canonical fire all their QA people like Microsoft?

Re:More bricking... by Luthair · 2018-01-10 05:33 · Score: 1

Unlike last time this article is click bait, if you can roll back the PC it isn't bricked.
Re:More bricking... by scumdamn · 2018-01-10 05:48 · Score: 1

It was the same thing with Windows and AMD processors. The PC wouldn't boot the first time but after you hard power it off it boots right up and tells you there was a problem with the update. That's not bricking either.
Re:More bricking... by sinij · 2018-01-10 06:31 · Score: 2

Unlike last time this article is click bait, if you can roll back the PC it isn't bricked.
My patching script includes purging of all old kernel versions.

... but what about...

I said ALL! It bricked. I need a new laptop now. Can't be helped.
Re:More bricking... by lactose99 · 2018-01-10 06:53 · Score: 1

If you thought you're PC was bricked, you REALLY want to see this...

--
Fully licensed blockchain psychiatrist
Re:More bricking... by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 07:26 · Score: 0

If you thought you’re PC
No, I thought I am Mac.
Re: More bricking... by Monster_user · 2018-01-10 13:46 · Score: 1

Swap HDD, install a copy of the OS with the kernel that boots, then copy the kernel files from the new hdd to the old one running the b0rked OS. Correct the links in the root of the drive, and it boots.

Or you could just boot the new HDD, and pull the data off the old drive into the new install. Presto! Laptop works again.

Ultimate security by OrangeTide · 2018-01-10 05:28 · Score: 5, Funny

Let those hackers try and get into my system now!

--
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire

Re:Ultimate security by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 06:17 · Score: 1

The ME's probably still working...
Re:Ultimate security by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 06:35 · Score: 0

Joke's on you, *they* still get in via the ME/PSP backdoor. Or joshua...
Re:Ultimate security by OrangeTide · 2018-01-10 15:17 · Score: 1

That hardly seems fair, because I struggled for years to get MINIX drivers for my WiFi chipset.

--
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Re:Ultimate security by hcs_$reboot · 2018-01-10 17:07 · Score: 1

A picky one: spectre & meltdown do not help entering your system (not directly at least), the attacker has to be connected to run the programs.

--
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...

Please stop using bricking incorrectly. by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 05:29 · Score: 1

Choosing a different kernel on boot is hardly bricking

not booting != bricking by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 05:29 · Score: 0

See subject.

Meaning creep by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 05:29 · Score: 1

It's not bricking if you can revert to an older kernel. For it to be bricked it has to be completely unusable and only restorable by using another system (for phones, a JTAG programmer).

And THIS is why you should be using Window 10 by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 05:31 · Score: 0

Live Long and Prosper, or DIE free!

Re:And THIS is why you should be using Window 10 by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 11:53 · Score: 0

Fanke News, because Win10 on AMD also didn't reboot.

Not bricked probably by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 05:34 · Score: 0

In Grub, load a previous kernel. That's always an option.

That's not what "bricked" means by lorien420 · 2018-01-10 05:35 · Score: 1

If there's a way to recover the device, then it's not bricked. Picking the previous image in grub, while annoying, is a pretty simple workaround.

--
"[We'll be] really getting inside your head and making it an unpleasant place to be" -- Trent Reznor

Already fixed... by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 05:37 · Score: 5, Informative

Kernel 4.4.0-109, which fixes this problem, has already been pushed out.
Apparently, the PTI fix was not quite backported correctly.
For details, see https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1741934

Re: Already fixed... by Likes+Microsoft · 2018-01-10 07:07 · Score: 1

I have the exact same symptom using the -109 update, i.e., attempting to boot that kernel ends up doing a system reboot. Said reboot happens after I've successfully entered my full disk encryption password.

--
-- Who am I? How did I get here? My God, what have I done?!
Re: Already fixed... by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 08:34 · Score: 1

Try using the "nopti" kernel command-line option. If it boots, then you may want to add a comment to the linked bug report telling them that their fix is not necessarily complete.
Re:Already fixed... by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 22:53 · Score: 1

On a Dell Insperon 1750 Kernel 4.4.0-104 boots up OK, but on a shutdown hangs before powering off the PC, leaving it in a running - not shutdown state.
Kernel 4.4.0-109 fixes this. -
Re: Already fixed... by jrumney · 2018-01-10 22:58 · Score: 1

I don't think that is the same symptom. I updated three servers yesterday - one Skylake, one Broadwell, one Sandy Bridge. The first two went OK, the Sandy Bridge one just locked up part way through the boot - even Ctrl-Alt-Del was non functional, and required a power cycle to reboot and select the old -104 kernel.

Re:This command also bricks Linux computers by mykepredko · 2018-01-10 05:38 · Score: 1

Really? Let me try i...***Signal Lost***

--
Mimetics Inc. Twitter

Horrible title.. by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 05:39 · Score: 0

Sorry, but if the system can be booted by rolling back, or via other means.. It's not *bricked*!

It is *NOT* bricking! by Qbertino · 2018-01-10 05:42 · Score: 5, Insightful

Bricking is the equivalent of applying a killpoke. A software action that makes the hardware henceforth unusable.

This just screws up the kernel and requires you to set up a fresh one, perhaps reinstalling the core system. On Linux this is usually nothing more than a minor annoyance.

Again: it's not bricking. Bricking is when a software update or piece of code renders my smartphone not more useful than a brick and irreversibly so.

Stop using the word just because it's new and describes something significant. It doesn't make your news more interesting, it makes your news false.

Thank you.

--
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca

Re:It is *NOT* bricking! by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 05:48 · Score: 2, Insightful

It's part of a larger Millennial Trend to make their stupid, worthless "contributions" seem much more impressive.
"literally" -> absolutely, positively NOT literally
"hacking" -> doing something differently, like putting avocado on toast
"crypto" -> some retarded cartoon-backed pseudo currency
Re:It is *NOT* bricking! by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 05:53 · Score: 1

You are 100% correct. But your efforts are in vain. The majority of people don't care about that level of linguistic precision. They have usurped the term to simply mean "break" in a more vague and general sense.
They are wrong. But there are more of them than there are of you. So, you are outvoted, and that makes them right.
The world will continue to use "brick" even when it does not apply, no matter how many times you plead for it to stop. It will eventually land in dictionaries as a simple synonym for "break." And there is nothing you can do to stop it.
The truth is sometimes a bitter pill, but once you swallow it, you are better for it.

Mint 18.2 w/ 4.4.0-108.131 by ArhcAngel · 2018-01-10 05:42 · Score: 1

Upgraded my kernel yesterday without issue. Got a notice this morning 4.4.0-109.132 was available.

--
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K

Re:Mint 18.2 w/ 4.4.0-108.131 by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 06:30 · Score: 0

Upgraded my kernel this morning in Mint. I had two resolvable issues.
One was that my wireless network could not be turned on. Rebooting and turning it on in the old kernel solved that. Then I booted into the -108 version again.
Second issue was that I had to reconfigure dnscrypt and dnsmasq to get DNS working again. This happens occasionally whenever my network gets screwed up. All is well now though.

Not bricked #2305473 by Fly+Swatter · 2018-01-10 05:43 · Score: 5, Informative

Press down arrow at boot menu screen.

Re:Not bricked #2305473 by Antique+Geekmeister · 2018-01-10 06:37 · Score: 1

Not all environments allow access to boot menue screens. In particular, virtualized hosts do not allow access unless the owner of the virtual server elects to allow graphical access to the hypervisor. This is technologically feasible but proscribed for basic security reasons by various virtualization providers, such as AWS and many locally administered virtualiztion toolkits.
Re:Not bricked #2305473 by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 08:27 · Score: 0

Not all environments allow access to boot menue screens. In particular, virtualized hosts do not allow access unless the owner of the virtual server elects to allow graphical access to the hypervisor. This is technologically feasible but proscribed for basic security reasons by various virtualization providers, such as AWS and many locally administered virtualiztion toolkits.
I rent several vps accross diffferent providers and all of them provide some sort of emergency console. Besides, anyone serious about the uptime of his server would apply the patch to a test server before applying it on the production machine.
This is at best a minor annoyance.
Re:Not bricked #2305473 by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 20:57 · Score: 0

The good news is that for things like AWS, you can detach the EBS volume of the virtual "brick" (not bricked in the slightest) to another instance that works fine, and edit your grub conf to boot the previous kernel, unmount, detach, reattach to original instance, start.
Hey look, a working VM again.
This is basic boot troubleshooting in cloud services.

i have an AMD Ryzen-7 1700 & Radeon RX-580 by FudRucker · 2018-01-10 05:43 · Score: 0, Offtopic

and so far i have not found a Linux distro to run very well on it without the system locking up, windows 10 would even lock up on it until i did a BIOS update and wiped the OEM copy of windows 10 off and did a clean windows install from an ISO downloaded from microsoft, i think it has something to do with the graphics card because Linux will run good on it until the xorg launches and tries to run an x-window-system & desktop GUI

--
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing

Re:i have an AMD Ryzen-7 1700 & Radeon RX-580 by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 06:01 · Score: 1

General advice: Run memtest86, run burn-in programs for CPU and GPU to see if you have an overheating issue.
In linux, watch your GPU fans, for some reason mine wouldn't turn on when needed and I was having overheating issues. As always, if you have problems with radeon cards in linux, install a distro that allows you to use the proprietary drivers from AMD and try that. That fixed my fan issue.
Re:i have an AMD Ryzen-7 1700 & Radeon RX-580 by sa666_666 · 2018-01-10 06:40 · Score: 1

I had to add "rcu_nocbs=0-15" to the grub kernel arguments. I'm running an 1800x and RX480, so not too different from yours. Previously it was locking up at least twice a day, now it hasn't had one lockup in over a month.

You keep using that word... by yorgasor · 2018-01-10 05:44 · Score: 2

I don't think it means what you think it means. If working around the bug means selecting a different item from the menu to boot, it's not really bricked.

--
Looking for a computer support specialist for your small business? Check out

Re:You keep using that word... by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 06:30 · Score: 0

Whenever someone has to quote Princess Bride, then we are all well and truly hosed. Ms. Mash is only mostly dead.
Re:You keep using that word... by hcs_$reboot · 2018-01-10 19:43 · Score: 1

Or maybe the meaning of "bricked" changed over time?

--
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...

Failed reboot is not "bricking" by Antique+Geekmeister · 2018-01-10 05:44 · Score: 5, Informative

Failing to use a particular new kernel is not "bricking". Bricking, as commonly used, means the physical hardware is unrecoverable and needs to be replaced. Recovering a failed Ubuntu kernel means being able to select a different kernel to boot with. This means console access or access to the disk image. These are problematic and can disable production servers. But it's much less destructive than ruining the physical hardware.

Re: Failed reboot is not "bricking" by Monster_user · 2018-01-10 05:53 · Score: 2

What I understood the word "brick" to originally mean, was that a device had been rendered so completely unusable that it had no more value or functionality than a brick, as there was no means for anyone other than the manufacturer to restore the device to any form of operation. Usually this was in spite of the fact that the hardware itself was fully functional.

As most of these devices were locked down regarding firmware and encryption, to limit rooting the device, etc., most of the causes were software related, corrupt operating systems and firmware, etc. The manufacturer's design choices made them impossible for a third party to repair. Rarely was it a hardware malfuction or failure.

No problem here by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 05:45 · Score: 0

Updated this morning, rebooted a few hours ago, no problem yet:

4.4.0-108-generic #131-Ubuntu SMP Sun Jan 7 14:34:49 UTC 2018 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

No problem with 16.04.3 LTS by BeemerBoy · 2018-01-10 05:46 · Score: 2

Wow! Guess I'm fortunate to have a newer kernel. I was running the 4.10 kernel and the update upgraded me to the 4.13 kernel. All my computers (including one running the equivalent level of Linux Mint) booted just fine with the 4.13.0-26 kernel.

--
Buzzing the information Superhighway at Warp speed

Not "bricked" - Misleading title by michaelcole · 2018-01-10 05:50 · Score: 4, Informative

From the article comments moments ago:

> Technically, if you are able to boot with an older kernel, your computer is not bricked. ;-)

> You are right. I've updated the title.

if you can roll back..... by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 05:52 · Score: 0

it ain't a brick

I had this problem... by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 05:54 · Score: 1

on my Intel desktop running Mint (Ubuntu derivative). I updated the kernel and got a black screen upon reboot. Investigated and found it was freezing the system exactly when the kernel loads. I simply booted the previous kernel and removed this version. A few hours later, I noticed an even newer kernel update was available and updated... problem solved. Total non-issue.

Meltdown and Spectre are serious issues. I see problem this as a bump on the way to a fix. Rarely have I had problems with updating Mint or Ubuntu. But it does happen. The fix was lightning fast.

Not the specter/meltdown patch by wbr1 · 2018-01-10 05:55 · Score: 0

It is just the new systemd(estroy) update gobbling all resources.

--
Silence is a state of mime.

Not everyone is affected/Nobody "Bricked" by mykepredko · 2018-01-10 05:56 · Score: 4, Insightful

Just saw the headline and panicked, checking my Linux systems (all running ubuntu 16.04 LTS) and did a quick check:

myke@mimeticsL01:~$ uname -a
Linux mimeticsL01 4.4.0-108-generic #131-Ubuntu SMP Sun Jan 7 14:34:49 UTC 2018 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
myke@mimeticsL01:~$

I've never had a problem with Ubuntu updates (although I RFTA, it sounds like all Ubuntu users have an issue at one time or another). I suspect that the kernel update was tested before it was released so this updates affects some subset of the systems out there.

Like many other people, I was very concerned when i saw the headline saying the updated was "bricking" systems - whoever wrote the headline needs to have the term "bricking" explained to them (ideally with an actual brick).

In the future, msmash, you might want to be a bit less sensational in the headlines and make sure you understand if the terms used in it are correct.

--
Mimetics Inc. Twitter

Re:Not everyone is affected/Nobody "Bricked" by TimMD909 · 2018-01-10 07:31 · Score: 1

Just saw the headline and panicked, checking my Linux systems (all running ubuntu 16.04 LTS) and did a quick check:

myke@mimeticsL01:~$ uname -a Linux mimeticsL01 4.4.0-108-generic #131-Ubuntu SMP Sun Jan 7 14:34:49 UTC 2018 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux myke@mimeticsL01:~$
I've never had a problem with Ubuntu updates (although I RFTA, it sounds like all Ubuntu users have an issue at one time or another). I suspect that the kernel update was tested before it was released so this updates affects some subset of the systems out there.
Like many other people, I was very concerned when i saw the headline saying the updated was "bricking" systems - whoever wrote the headline needs to have the term "bricking" explained to them (ideally with an actual brick).
In the future, msmash, you might want to be a bit less sensational in the headlines and make sure you understand if the terms used in it are correct.
Asking Ms. Mash to not be sensational is like asking Mike Tyson to pronounce words correctly. Not gonna happen. As Ms. Mash never seems to get the headlines or blurb right, it makes sense that said person's name is a homonym for "mismatch". Got a story about how a guy with cancer went into remission then got a female wiener dog? You'll end up with a headline like "Wiener Dogs Successfully Used to Fight Cancer and Sexism".

Summary by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 05:57 · Score: 0

Summary:
Bricked is incorrect. You just boot with an older kernel to recover.

"108" kernel has now been replaced in the main repos with "109" which fixes the issue.

"Bricking" by TheDarkener · 2018-01-10 05:57 · Score: 2

This is not what "bricking" is. If you can fix it (i.e. roll back to an earlier kernel image in this case), it's simply a botched kernel update.

C'mon, msmash.

--
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

Re:"Bricking" by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 07:17 · Score: 0

I'm sorry your special snowflake sensibilities were hurt, but the term "brick" has taken on new meaning. Language changes. Learn to adapt.
1. The term originally meant that the device now has the same value as a brick; i.e. it's a paperweight.
2. Later it meant the device's firmware has been corrupted, and the device is a <previous definition of brick> until you re-flash the firmware [*].
3. Now it simply means the device is not bootable until you find a way to manually repair it.
If you understand the 2nd definition, then there's no point in arguing about the 3rd definition, because it's just a minor difference in degree of inconvenience.
[*] = The 2nd definition has been in widespread use for more than a decade. If you're not aware of this definition, then it means you probably need to turn in your geek card, because it's used every wifi router firmware forum. (What self-respecting nerd hasn't re-flashed his or her router's firmware?)

Vast permutations of hardware, 3rd party driver ? by perpenso · 2018-01-10 06:02 · Score: 1

It seems that these companies (Microsoft and Ubuntu and others) are forgetting everything about sound software development practices here. They're in such a hurry to deploy patches that they aren't taking the time to fully test them. The cure is worse than the ailment.

Both Microsoft and Ubuntu are plagued by the vast permutations of hardware out there, all the combinations of motherboard, cpu, video, etc. Aren't there identified problems with various anti-virus software? Did some driver developer out there try something tricky too that is incompatible with the fix(es)? Historically various problems with Windows came from 3rd party drivers not necessarily Microsoft itself, perhaps Ubuntu is having similar problems?

A web page can now own your system by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 06:06 · Score: 1

... so they're implementing this 30% performance penalty to protect users from themselves? ...

Yes, because the flaws can be exploited by sandboxed javascript code; a web page can now own your system.

Re:A web page can now own your system by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 07:10 · Score: 1

Meltdown cannot be exploited using Javascript. Spectre can, but is very hard to exploit, and access is limited to the web browser's own process memory. And most browsers are moving to limit the number of web pages that are handled per process, so even this is limited.
Everyone needs to stop blowing this out of proportion. Meltdown is a major issue if you sell VPSes; for the rest it's only an issue if you allow unvetted third party binaries to run on your computer, and even then it only slightly makes security worse (how many people seriously need access to more than your user area to exploit you?) Spectre isn't an issue yet, it's very hard to exploit, and it'll become harder now web browser makers know about it.
Re:A web page can now own your system by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 08:05 · Score: 0, Interesting

Can we please just trash JS once and for all?
Re:A web page can now own your system by scdeimos · 2018-01-10 09:46 · Score: 5, Informative

Meltdown cannot be exploited using Javascript.
Yes it can, even WebKit says so...

Meltdown means that userland code, such as JavaScript running in a web browser, can read kernel memory. Not all CPUs are affected by Meltdown and Meltdown is being mitigated by operating system changes. Mounting a Meltdown attack via JavaScript running in WebKit requires first bypassing branch-based security checks, like in the case of a Spectre attack. Therefore, Spectre mitigations that fix the branch problem also prevent an attacker from using WebKit as the starting point for Meltdown.
REF: https://webkit.org/blog/8048/w...
Most browser vendors are implementing many changes to mitigate Meltdown and Spectre, including things like reducing the precision of high-fidelity timers from 5us to 20us +/- 20us, disabling SharedArrayBuffers and recompiling with Spectre-aware compilers.
Re:A web page can now own your system by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-11 04:42 · Score: 0

What you've quoted is shit. You absolutely cannot read kernel memory from Javascript due to Meltdown. The authors of the Meltdown paper are making no such claims, and they are the people who'd know. If you disagree, post a PoC.

Most browser vendors are implementing many changes to mitigate Meltdown and Spectre
This is technically correct, but is more accurate if rewritten without the "Meltdown and" but.

Nooo by Cajun+Hell · 2018-01-10 06:09 · Score: 0

This kind of thing is hilarious when it happens to Windows users. Pass the popcorn.

But now it's getting real. Pretty much every computer I have, except my piece-of-shit phones, is running Ubuntu 16.04. Not funny anymore. OMG, is this what it feels like to be a New Yorker when I'm telling 9/11 jokes?

--
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump

No bricking here! Just.. by forgottenusername · 2018-01-10 06:09 · Score: 1

All new crashes:

[ 22.462856] kernel BUG at /build/linux-J4_1pC/linux-4.4.0/mm/slub.c:3627!
[ 22.462874] invalid opcode: 0000 [#1] SMP

Yay for regressions.

Not when it's horribly exaggerated by raymorris · 2018-01-10 06:12 · Score: 1

If Microsoft released an update that required two key presses to fix and some moron claimed in the headline that it "bricked" computers, we'd have chorus of people saying "the author is an idiot. That's not bricked.". I imagine we'll get the same response today.

It's like most of MD Solar's submissions. There may be a kernel of truth somewhere in them, but they are so wildly exaggerated that the appropriate response is an outpouring of derision for the misleading articles and headlines, not hunting for so hint of something kinda true among the bullshit.

Thank the FSM... by sconeu · 2018-01-10 06:20 · Score: 1

I'd previously upgraded to 4.10.x (for some hardware support). Xenial still wanted me to do the 4.4.0-108 kernel. Needless to say, I didn't do it.

--
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.

Idiot by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 06:31 · Score: 0

Stop trying to sensationalize the headlines with a complete misuse of buzzwords like "bricking".

Fixed in 4.4.0-109 by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 06:44 · Score: 0

According to the bug reports, this issue is now fixed in the 16.04 4.4.0-109 kernel.

NOT "Bricking", read TFA by old_skul · 2018-01-10 06:49 · Score: 1

A bricked machine is completely useless. If you can roll back to an earlier kernel, you are not bricked. Read the article and don't just parrot a clickbait headline.

@ least M$ did a good job (faster here) by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 07:06 · Score: 0

See subject: My system 'felt faster' on Win7 & I posted on it days ago & formal tests on 10 = FASTER https://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11574131&cid=55874785/ - I see a lot of negativity being spread by 'competitors' on this note & despite MS' statement on Win7 being 'slowed' by this patch vs. Intel CPU Meltdown &/or Specter 2 faults on ProcessControlBlock, Transition Lookaside Buffer & page table reloads between usermode & kernelmode transitions in drivers etc. (to try get more folks onto Win10 imo as most folks aren't running VM's or DB's clientside which are the most adversely affected applications I've seen)?

* I am faster - as well as SAFER too!

(I run this system for easily 14++ hrs./day & can tell what is what - later, when news of TechSpot's analysis came thru? It bore out my perceptions).

I was worried on IP stack (it's hybrid Plug & Play design, restartable in usermode) & DirectX for gaming (not usermode drivers since WinXP) for gaming + backup/defrag (not exactly FAST to begin with anyway - but, seem same pretty much - & after updating ALL apps today + this patch I ran defrag & backup - same despite heavy disk I/O).

APK

P.S.=> IMPORTANT: I applied the same to a pal's Win7 rig BUT I backed up the post PATCH IMAGE & rebooted - got "NO OPERATING SYSTEM FOUND" but I restored from a SYSTEM IMAGE (patched one) & voila - it booted fine, patched properly & IS FASTER as is mine on 7... apk

I thought by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 07:08 · Score: 0

I thought Ubuntu LTS stood for Long-Term Support and not Lunging Thrust-Smack.

Re:This command also bricks Linux computers by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 07:13 · Score: 0

Nope... if you are using a SSD you want

sudo blkdiscard -v /dev/sda

Faster and pretty much guaranteed that there is 0 chance of recovery (as once the electrons are out of the gate, there is no way back.

This is all a lie! by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 07:23 · Score: 0

Everyone knows nothing like this happens to Open Sores operating systems! Because many eyes blah blah blah!

Bricking vs Bricking by Cro+Magnon · 2018-01-10 07:30 · Score: 1

IMO, there's a difference between bricking a Linux box vs a Windows box. Unless you have a System 76, you probably installed Linux yourself, or had your nephew do it. That means you have the install media and can reinstall the damn thing.

OTOH, Windows machines don't come with install disks. If Windows is foobar, then for all intensive porpoises, it's bricked (short of taking it to a PC repair place that will unbrick it for what you can pay for a new one).

--
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.

Re:Bricking vs Bricking by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 12:52 · Score: 0

No, there is no fucking difference.
It's only "bricked" if it is just as useful as a brick.
In other words you can't ever recover it ever again or use it as anything other than a paperweight.
This headline is retarded and so is anyone else that thinks "bricked" means something besides permanently fucked.
Re:Bricking vs Bricking by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 16:43 · Score: 0

That means you have the install media and can reinstall the damn thing.
Install media these days is whatever USB thumb drive I can find lying around that will fit a linux image. It it "bricked" all of my house machines at once, well I'd have problems. Fortunately that is unlikely.
Also I'm pretty sure you can just download windows 10 these days, even without MSDN. link
You can also make media (i think) from the OS. You probably need to take a picture of your windows key and save it to email or something, just in case...
Of course I haven't actually tried all this, so ymmv..

New is the enemy of stable. by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 07:33 · Score: 0

Freshly installed 16.04.3 runs the 4.10.x kernel. It includes the HWE. That's on a laptop here.

Initial 16.04.1 and earlier installs might have 4.4.x kernels. I do have a reverse proxy running that, but it won't be patched until the scheduled maintenance period in a few days. By that time, this issue should be resolved.

My primary desktop is still running 14.04, happily.

Kernel 4.4.0-109.132 has been issued to fix this by w1zz4 · 2018-01-10 07:34 · Score: 3, Informative

Kernel 4.4.0-109.132 has been issued to fix this

And APK is still a retard by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 07:42 · Score: 0

And Alexander Peter Kowalski is still a retard.
The subject wasn't about your stupid windows box or windows at all yet like the retard you are you felt the need to chime in.
I guess you really do like showing the world just how dumb you are.

Re: by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 07:51 · Score: 0

That is a normal update, since neither Windows nor Ubuntu Linux cares about stability. Why is this news? Why are people surprised?

I blame... by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 07:59 · Score: 0

... systemd

Re:Blame The Register for early story release by sl3xd · 2018-01-10 08:29 · Score: 2

Anybody actually paying attention knew well before The Register printed anything.

The flaw was spelled out reasonably well by LWN as far back as November 15th, and it was noted that it was highly unusual for the patchset to be fast-tracked as it was. LWN also mentioned the initial KPTI patchset (then called KAISER) about a week earlier than that (Nov 10th). A month later, LWN followed up (including notes that ARM64 was affected) - more than a week before The Resister printed anything.

It was clear that something monumental was on the horizon, and that it was related to memory protection.

It was even clear that there was an information embargo in place, because comments were scrubbed from the associated patches.

It's been reasonably public for close to two months now.

The unknowns were more along the lines of "How deep is this pool of excrement," and "Which animal made it." Major OS patches were a fargone conclusion.

--
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.

Learn to READ projecting retard U are by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 09:09 · Score: 0

See subject & FACT on how I 'worked around' a "MISSING OPERATING SYSTEM" screwup on a Win7 patch in my post!

* ... & stop 'stalking' me like the RETARD you project YOU are (for your own sake - not that you care behind UNIDENTIFIABLE anonymous posts HIDING like "your kind", worms & losers, does, lmao!).

APK

P.S.=> Can't you do ANYTHING useful? I do just like MS' patch, I make you FASTER & SAFER natively via 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/ for FREE (except my work's PROVEN "bugfree & bulletproof" for 5++ yrs. publicly now as well as safe)... apk

Never let a crisis go to waste -- by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 09:52 · Score: 0

Question is, what nefarious crap are they trying to slip by us by using this crisis of forced patching?
Microsoft for instance seems to be taking the Apple tack of excessively slowing down older systems to induce upgrades to Windows 10. Intel keeps trying to drag AMD into the mix and force unnecessary slowdowns on it to slow the uptake of Ryzen systems. My fingers cramp up when I think of the stuff Apple is doing.. The list goes on..

Thank God for Slashdot... by dbreeze · 2018-01-10 10:29 · Score: 1

...and a slow ISP(Frontier). I was actually in the process of downloading the update when I stumbled across this article and canceled the update. It is the xxxx.109.x kernel update but I've seen at least 1 report of that still having an issue here. I'll just wait a couple of days for this to get sorted out....

--
When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law he tore his robes.2Kings22:11

Re:Thank God for Slashdot... by dbreeze · 2018-01-10 10:37 · Score: 1

https://news.slashdot.org/comm...

--
When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law he tore his robes.2Kings22:11

might be 4.4 by btroy · 2018-01-10 11:55 · Score: 2

I ran into a similar issue on an old AMD machine in another distro. Changed a kernel option to noapic and it worked.

"Bricking" by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 12:27 · Score: 0

seems to be the new overused and abused word of the day. If it's truly "bricked", then your computer is as good as a doorstop with no possibility of being repaired let alone be rolled back. i roll my eyes.

If you can boot and roll back software, the device by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-10 12:35 · Score: 0

Right?

Re: Microsoft's problem? by Monster_user · 2018-01-10 14:19 · Score: 1

I'm surprised that I am agreeing with the AC here.

Ubuntu may be a "free" OS, built around what was once a hobby for a bunch of nerds. That doesn't excuse where it is strategically positioned. Ubuntu is now included with Microsoft Windows. It is a part of a truly commercial desktop system. They are backed by a commercial entity in Canonical, which provides enterprise level support to compete with RedHat, etc.

In my experience, kernel updates, which deploy as part of the normal update process, are not trivial. I stopped using, and eventually deleted Ubuntu from my PC altogether, due to non-trivial kernel updates b0rking my system every single time I updated from one release to the next. Literally, every single time. At work I'm running into the other problem of inodes and/or disk space filling up on volumes containing the kernels or kernel sources, resulting in failed kernel upgrades and non-booting servers. I put up with it because Microsoft needs some competition, but I'm burned out on Ubuntu.

BRICKING??? by OneAhead · 2018-01-10 20:30 · Score: 1

You keep on using that word... Are you telling me that nobody knows that in the default Ubuntu boot menu, on can select an older (non-freezing) kernel image with a few keypresses in an extremely user-friendly fashion. This isn't even remotely close to "bricking". Heck, "bricking" resides in another galaxy.

Updated by TuxThePenguin2205 · 2018-01-10 20:37 · Score: 1

4.4.0-109 was released to fix the regression last night https://usn.ubuntu.com/usn/usn... for me 4.4.0-108 booted successfully and OOPSed on shutdown

Ubuntu 16.04.3 with kernel 4.4.0-109-generic by jjohn_h · 2018-01-10 20:59 · Score: 2

Absolutely no disturbances with Ubuntu 16.04.3 with kernel 4.4.0-109-generic.

Hysterical headline by Tough+Love · 2018-01-10 23:06 · Score: 1

The headline: "Meltdown and Spectre Patches Bricking Ubuntu"

The reality: The new kernel you upgraded to won't boot. So at the grub menu, scroll down to your old kernel and boot that. Good thing this kind of issue was anticipated and is easy to deal with as a result.

--
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.

Sorry retard APK by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-11 00:08 · Score: 0

And you decided to double down on the retard there Alexander Peter Kowalski.
Now you spam your BS hosts file garbage that no one brought up.
And then you claim it offers safety when many including myself have pointed out that it actually doesn't.
It is as effective as an AV scanner that detects viruses based off of file names.
It has is never has stopped an unknown threat source.
It doesn't stop entire categories of attacks like other solutions.
It can never stop all threat sources because you can't hold that many.
It can be circumvented by a trivial amount of java script because you can't list 6x10^98 hosts from a single domain, not including sub-domains.
It can't block inbound connections.

So how about you stop lying about and spamming your retard work and I will stop pointing out how much of a retard you are.
Besides you copied (ported) your work originally from someone else so you weren't even smart to come up with those very obvious and simple ideas on your own.
If you want to prove you aren't a retard then actually go and provide real proof support any of your easily refuted claims I debunked above.
Also proof isn't user testimonials, quotes from security experts that don't mention your work, non existent recommendations because your work happens to be in the Misc software section of some web site, a news article that doesn't mention you or your work, or wild speculation.

Basecode=port of good design & vs. your bs? by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-11 02:12 · Score: 0

Hosts do MORE 4 LESS vs.:

NoScript https://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11549257&cid=55843151/

Addons https://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11549257&cid=55839341/

AV (security issues per Tavis Ormandy & AV slows you - hosts speed you up 2 ways. Heuristics create false positives (happened to me & I overturned it w/ 9 AV falsely accusing me (like Nirsoft too))

Remote DNS https://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=9007355&threshold=-1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&pid=51969075/ w/ security issues BY 100's & remote DNS resolves slower vs. hosts

Routers (security issues galore we see for years like UPnP etc. + added costs of purchase+higher powerbills if "bolted on")

Wildcards block innocents!

Ur FAULTY idea on create/store 4++ billion hosts https://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11532533&cid=55833641/ FAILS!

APK

P.S.=> Hosts make ya FASTER/SAFER natively vs. illogically "Bolting on 'MoAr'" 4 less 4 FREE

It's not bricking by Tighe_L · 2018-01-11 05:06 · Score: 1

Bricking is when you cannot interact with the device, making it the equivalent of a brick. Please stop saying when a OS install is messed up it is bricked.

NOT A BRICK by p0larity · 2018-01-11 05:13 · Score: 1

If you can roll back, it's not a brick. Can we stop inappropriately using the term brick? Brick means no reasonable way of installing working software as an end user.

When something is bricked you need to JTAG flash it using extra hardware, or it's simply dead.

How to know something will not be bricked in 2018: it says it'll be bricked on /.

smh

That whooshing noise by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-11 16:09 · Score: 0

You can't connect if his system doesn't boot

Learn what "brick" means by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-12 03:07 · Score: 0

You guys need to learn what "brick" means in this context. It's trivially easy to boot off removable media and fix this.

It's NOT BRICKING by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-15 07:29 · Score: 0

For Pete's sake, get the terms right! "Bricking" a device means exactly that -- it's just like a brick! Good for nothing except stacking in a pile. It's can't be fixed, it can't be reloaded, etc. It's effectively DEAD! "Bricking" doesn't mean you have to reinstall the OS. Good grief, get your Tech Terms straight!

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Meltdown and Spectre Patches Bricking Ubuntu 16.04 Computers (bleepingcomputer.com)

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