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Intel's Chip Bug Fixes Have Bugs of Their Own (bleepingcomputer.com)
From a report: Intel said late Thursday it is investigating an issue with Broadwell and Haswell CPUs after customers reported higher system reboot rates when they installed firmware updates for fixing the Spectre flaw. The hardware vendor said these systems are both home computers and data center servers. "We are working quickly with these customers to understand, diagnose and address this reboot issue," said Navin Shenoy, executive vice president and general manager of the Data Center Group at Intel Corporation. "If this requires a revised firmware update from Intel, we will distribute that update through the normal channels. We are also working directly with data center customers to discuss the issue," Shenoy added. The Intel exec said users shouldn't feel discouraged by these snags and continue to install updates from OS makers and OEMs.
God help them if they are when they spontaneously reboot.
I was glad having both a Hazwell and Broadwell PC that I skipped the firmware for now. What's discouraging is no proper vetting of these fixes before pushing them out for the public. Frankly, I am about to just forgo this firmware and take my chances. The cure seems worse then the disease.
I just got this update and this cool browser extension that makes fart sounds when you click on links stopped working with the message:
TotallyNotAMeltdownExploit() has failed. Consider rebooting.
They really gotta test this stuff before the push it out. ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Regression of new-bug risk is why many non-critical bugs go unfixed and why companies like IBM sometimes release patches only to those customers who complain and who are willing to accept a fix that hasn't been thoroughly tested.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
In both cases there was a lot of worry about the threat. An countermeasure was rushed out, and it seems like the countermeasure may have some side effects.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
You have to wonder in each case if there's an element of overreaction going on.
In the Meltdown/Spectre case it the browser vendors are going to fuzz the timing functions to make side channel timing attacks harder to pull off
E.g.
http://news.softpedia.com/news...
Just like Microsoft and Mozilla, Google Chrome 64 will disable SharedArrayBuffer by default and modify the behavior of performance.now() by reducing precision from 5us to 20us in order to block exploits attempting to take advantage of the security vulnerabilities.
Also you can block third party scripts using uBlock Origin.
https://github.com/gorhill/uBl...
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;
Use AMD chips because they actually are immune to Meltdown and have already mitigated Spectre at the Microcode and OS level with a negligible impact on performance. Intel has yet to get their shit together and it's performance impact is growing with every new patch.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Regression of new-bug risk
should read
Regression or new-bug risk
The patch above is an "early-release" patch. It has not undergone rigorous testing. The reader assumes all implementation and other risks.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
That is the problem. Intel shouldn't built the back door in. The solution to disable it, as in not make it work. The old form of firmware update worked just fine; you had to be there with a floppy, CD or usb drive. This back door that can turn your computer on, scan it's disks is a tool for spying and nothing more. Curious, that is how it is being used too.
Probably how the Russian got into our campaign servers.
QA and QC have been outsourced to the user now, showing a dramatic cost savings for the corporations. One could be fooled into thinking that this is a bad thing for the corporations as users might decide to pay more for a product that just works, but observing the modern economy shows that society is full of a bunch of masochists who want to pay even less for the new and shiny even if it comes broken from the get go as long as the corporations promise to fix it in software later on.
Intel Broadwell and Haswell CPUs Experiencing Reboots After Firmware Updates
Let's call it what it is. There's a difference between a reboot and a crash. It sounds to me like users are experiencing the latter.
The Intel exec said users shouldn't feel discouraged by these snags and continue to install updates from OS makers and OEMs.
Yo Brian, It takes courage to put bugs in your bugs.
Why is this news? Bad fixes to fix bad things is what's called "job security" in the software business. Either that, or all software programmers are stupid worthless idiots.
99 little bugs in the code
Take one down and patch it around
127 little bugs in the code.
AMD doesn't have as much issues as the overpriced Intel junk. There are problems, but they are harder to abuse and, although harder to mitigate as well, fixed by now without any reboot issues or other new flaws. Intel used to be the go to vendor for performance CPUs, but with Ryzen the gap closed. Sure, they may be some odd cases where Intel still fares better, but not twice as much money better. The folks at Intel hang out too much with the morons from Apple.
I am regret... I built my skylake system shortly before Ryzen came out Skylake has its own bugs to add to these new ones.... But it will last me a while longer I plan on building a Ryzen 2 system when those launch. Will be the first AMD build for me although I have owned some AMD machines on the side my own personal rigs have always been Intel and I have been building since the P3 days. It was mostly a good run minus the whole Pentium 4 stuff but I can put up with slightly lower performance the show stopping bugs? Not so much and it feels like AMD is doing better than Intel right now at that.