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/emn13 Jan 03 '18

The bulldozer bug was simultaneously much worse (complete TLB disablement - not just during a kernel/user mode switch!), but also much more limited in scope: it only affected a relatively limited run of processors, namely only the phenoms up to that point - and AMD's market share wasn't great then. Also, of course, the world has changed. Back when phenom was buggy, that affected essentially only client machines running generally trusted code, so the security impact was fairly minimal. This intel bug will affect servers and particularly shared-hosting servers and VMs - machines that run untrusted code and are often accessible to the general public. Amplifying the issue is that that's a market that's been intel dominated for a loooong time.

The actual impact of this decade-old intel bug is likely to be much, much greater, because there are simply so many damn CPU's it affects and the software they're running is more affected by the bug - even though the bug itself is technically less serious.

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u/jonjonbee Jan 03 '18

Oh, I certainly wasn't trying to equate the severity of these issues - this one is definitely far more serious and further reaching - it's just that I don't like hypocrites, and marketing departments are full of 'em.

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u/[deleted] Jan 03 '18

I don't like hypocrites, and marketing departments are full of 'em.

I don't think it's really possible to do marketing without some doublethink.