On 04/05/18 09:19, Aham Brahmasmi wrote:
Hello Misc,
Will OpenBSD's patches for Spectre help mitigate the risk for the
processor families which are not receiving Intel's mitigation microcode
for Spectre/Spectre variant 2?
Backdrop
Intel has issued a Microcode Revision Guidance on April 3, 2018 [1].
As per this guidance, some processor families will not be receiving
the Spectre/Spectre variant 2 mitigation microcode updates from Intel.
The reasons for this kind act of benevolence are best known to Intel.
The above is my understanding based on TheRegister's article[2]. As a
layman who understands little to nothing about Spectre or Meltdown, I
am wondering whether OpenBSD's mitigations would be sufficient.
On a side note, older IBM-era ThinkPads seem to be left out by Intel.
ThinkPad Classic is/was for volks with lot of money. Lenovo wants to be
Apple. I do not have words to express myself.
Regards,
ab
[1] -
https://newsroom.intel.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/11/2018/04/microcode-update-guidance.pdf
[2] - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/04/04/intel_spectre_microcode_updates/
---------|---------|---------|---------|---------|---------|---------|--
Sir Brahmasmi:
From http://www.openbsd.org/63.html
- What's New
-- section - Security improvements:
OpenBSD/arm64 now uses kernel page table isolation to mitigate Spectre
variant 3 (Meltdown) attacks.
OpenBSD/armv7 and OpenBSD/arm64 now flush the Branch Target Buffer (BTB)
on processors that do speculative execution to mitigate Spectre variant
2 attacks.
--
Boyd Stephens
