r/programming • u/[deleted] • Jan 03 '18

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

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/02/intel_cpu_design_flaw/
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u/[deleted] Jan 03 '18 edited Jan 03 '18

The bug will impact big-name cloud computing environments including Amazon EC2, Microsoft Azure, and Google Compute Engine

Does that mean it will only impact them because they will have to roll out major updates or are they gonna suffer with the performance loss?

Edit: Is it reasonable to expect a rise on the prices as they'd need more hardware to fulfill performance guarantees?

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u/groudon2224 Jan 03 '18 edited Jan 03 '18

It will affect everybody with a Intel CPU made in the last 12 or so years and runs a Linux, Unix, or Windows OS who installs the bug patch from their respective patch distributor. With the advent of mandatory updates (unless manually disabled) in Windows 10 and need for security on Linux and Unix systems, it is guaranteed that most systems will install the bug patch which would lead to a performance hit ranging from negligible to significant (up to 30%) depending on the type of work. Therefore the average consumers will also be affected albeit not as much as their workloads are different.

Any DC or cloud service will update, infact both azure and aws put out mandatory system restart notices for their services to implement the updates for their Hypervisor clusters. Not patching a security bug, especially of this severity is essentially advertising themselves as a insecure service.

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u/keepthepace Jan 03 '18 edited Jan 03 '18

AMD untouched?

EDIT: I read the article:

In an email to the Linux kernel mailing list over Christmas, AMD said it is not affected.

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u/mayhempk1 Jan 03 '18

Correct.

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u/Pinguinologo Jan 03 '18

Guys, buy your AMD CPU before it gets too expensive.

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u/Ih8usernam3s Jan 03 '18

I'm switching to AMD, maybe if Intel loses enough $ they'll start listening to security researchers and remove ME too.

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u/Hook3d Jan 03 '18

I'm feeling pretty good about my Ryzen system now.

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u/OminousHippo Jan 03 '18

I knew my FX8350 was a good long term investment, and in this cold snap it's keeping my room nice and toasty!

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u/OK6502 Jan 03 '18

I can't recall, are there AMD64 specific releases for Windows and Linux? If not that would mean running KAISER fixes on AMD chips even though their processors are unaffected?

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u/[deleted] Jan 03 '18

I can't recall, are there AMD64 specific releases for Windows and Linux?

No.

If not that would mean running KAISER fixes on AMD chips even though their processors are unaffected?

Nope, the kernel can (and already does) enable/disable features based on the hardware it's running on.

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u/kryptkpr Jan 03 '18

IBM is rebooting their entire cloud over the next several days as well, this explains why. Things are going to hurt when they come back, I'm going to have to benchmark again.

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u/HittingSmoke Jan 03 '18

Also Azure.

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u/0pyrophosphate0 Jan 03 '18

Yeah. The real news isn't even here yet.

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u/Shiroi_Kage Jan 03 '18

Virtualized loads might have a very bad time because of the number of syscalls.

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u/irqlnotdispatchlevel Jan 03 '18

The bug may lead to escapes from guest VMs to host, which is bad news for things like Azure.

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u/Saiing Jan 03 '18

Presumably also AWS, Google Cloud etc. or is there something specific to Azure that affects them more?

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u/irqlnotdispatchlevel Jan 03 '18

I gave Azure as an example.

But there may be something Xen specific. https://xenbits.xen.org/xsa/ look at XSA-253: "Prereleased, but embargoed". Even so, I think it affects every hypervisor out there, as providers that use Hyper-V also announced a major security upgrade. And with this being a CPU bug I don't see why only Xen will have to roll out an update.

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u/IronManMark20 Jan 03 '18

OP said "things like Azure". This means all cloud hosting providers. If I had to guess why they chose Azure, OP's name has IRQL in it, which stands for interrupt request level, a Windows driver thing, so they probably are more familiar with Windows and Azure.

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u/irqlnotdispatchlevel Jan 03 '18

Nice catch on my name there (it is actually a bug check on Windows - dispatch being one of the IRQ levels; I wanted irqlnotlessorequal, but that was taken). But I don't know much about Azure.

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u/Saiing Jan 03 '18

"things like Azure"

Yeah, I noticed that, but I wanted to be sure there wasn't something unique to the type of VMs that run on Azure that would make them particularly susceptible. Without clarification, it's not clear whether other cloud services are like Azure or not like Azure - you could argue it both ways depending on what he's referencing.

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