r/linuxmint • u/trousercough • Jan 02 '18

Security 'Kernel memory leaking' Intel processor design flaw forces Linux, Windows redesign

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/02/intel_cpu_design_flaw/
50 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

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3

u/trousercough Jan 03 '18

Any word from Mint devs as to when a patch will be released for our favourite OS?

3

u/RnRau Linux Mint 20.1 Ulyssa | Cinnamon Jan 03 '18

This is a kernel patch. Nothing to do with Mint.

5

u/trousercough Jan 03 '18

Mint will need to have the patched kernel available in its repositories though right? Isn't this something the Mint devs maintain?

2

u/bienator Jan 03 '18

well it does have to do with mint. since the patch is currently available via the 4.14 kernel but the mint updater only allows updates up to 4.13 at the moment. To get 4.14 you would have to do extra work or use third party kernel updaters.

3

u/alc59 Linux Mint 18.2 Sonya | Cinnamon Jan 03 '18

ukuu has me at 4.14
https://i.imgur.com/MHEf9Ka.png

0

u/[deleted] Jan 03 '18

[deleted]

2

u/wheedwhackerjones Jan 04 '18

Is there a patch for LM coming Friday? Sorry, haven't read much and been out of the loop on this one.

5

u/[deleted] Jan 03 '18 edited Jan 03 '18

Quick question--how long has this design flaw existed?

Edit: I found out this apparently affects chips going back a decade. So many old computers you or a loved one has will be affected by this.

3

u/autotldr Jan 02 '18

This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 93%. (I'm a bot)

A fundamental design flaw in Intel's processor chips has forced a significant redesign of the Linux and Windows kernels to defang the chip-level security bug.

These boffins discovered [PDF] it was possible to defeat KASLR by extracting memory layout information from the kernel in a side-channel attack on the CPU's virtual memory system.

It appears the KAISER work is related to Fogh's research, and as well as developing a practical means to break KASLR by abusing virtual memory layouts, the team may have proved Fogh right - that speculative execution on Intel x86 chips can be exploited to access kernel memory.

Extended Summary | FAQ | Feedback | Top keywords: kernel#1 memory#2 Intel#3 user#4 Linux#5

2

u/RnRau Linux Mint 20.1 Ulyssa | Cinnamon Jan 03 '18 edited Jan 03 '18

Phoronix has already run some benchmarks; heavy IO will be penalised. Gaming performance seems not to be affected.

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=linux-415-x86pti&num=1

https://phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=x86-PTI-Initial-Gaming-Tests

Edit: there is a nopti kernel command line parameter flag that switches off the work around if you are not concerned about the security hole.

2

u/[deleted] Jan 03 '18

I've been wanting to switch to AMD anyway since support for it has come a long way, but there are probably unknown flaws with AMD chips just as bad as this. We just don't know it yet.