On Mon, Jan 08, 2018 at 02:50:09PM -0500, Larry Stotler wrote:
I can't seem to pin down whether the Core 2 or Pentium 4/Ms are affected by either of these issues. Most reports say since 1995 or Pentium Pro & Newer. Intel's list starts with the Core ix series and doesn't go back further. Of course I can't find the list on their site, but I found this one:
https://www.tweaktown.com/news/60411/heres-list-intel-cpus-affected-spectre-...
Also what about AMD? Their arch has differences. Is there a list for them? Athlon, AthlonXP, Athlon64?
Meltdown affects Intel chips. I think Core 2 for sure, Pentium 4 unclear. FWIW, there is a Meltdown exploit available for testing. https://github.com/paboldin/meltdown-exploit Spectre affects both Intel and AMD chips.
I've read that even the POWER chips have a spectre vuln(which seems to be more mitigatable)..
This is also our current understanding.
While there seems to be a great deal of hype about all this, I have to wonder how easy it is to compromise a system. Most reports save having to already have access to the machine. If that's the case, then I think you are already in trouble. It's also hard to tell how long the spy agencies have known about this and been (ab)using it.
I dunno. I just can't see that much interest in mitigating this on older chips/systems(even though a lot of us find them perfectly usable). Looks like a forced upgrade is going to be contemplated for many even though it's really hard to tell how many other issues are going to be found all things considering. We could all rush out and get the "fixed" hardware when it's released only to end up in the same boat sooner or later.
One thing is that Javascript in Firefox and Chrome was/is able to exploit Meltdown. This makes an attack over the web possible. (Firefox and Chrome javascript engines had high precision timers available and some form of direct byte buffer access. They want to make the high precission timers less precise.) Spectre is only beginning to be understood, it is actually more tricky from a Mitigation point of view. Ciao, Marcus -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org