Meltdown and Spectre Discussion Sticky

[joverstreet1]

Do Meltdown and Spectre vulnerability problems only apply to 64 bit processors ?

Thanks.

[coffeecat]

Thread moved to Security.

"Hardware" is for help getting hardware to work with Ubuntu.

[Frogs Hair]

I find a few posts about this . There will probably be more info in the coming days. Most intel chips since 1995 use speculative execution.

https://security.stackexchange.com/q.../176739#176739

Any CPU that performs speculative execution is vulnerable to Spectre, so yes, 32-bit OSs are vulnerable.

Meltdown is an issue with how Intel CPUs enforce memory protection while performing speculative execution (in short, memory protection isn't enforced until the point at which speculative execution is turned into real execution). 32-bit OSs on Intel CPUs are vulnerable, but the heavier use of swap reduces the impact somewhat (Meltdown can only read physical memory; data that's been swapped out to disk is inaccessible).

[mikewhatever]

This is a partial quote that looks much like FUD. The original one looks like this:
http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2018/...n-spectre.html

Ubuntu users of the 64-bit x86 architecture (aka, amd64) can expect updated kernels by the original January 9, 2018 coordinated release date, and sooner if possible.

Presumably, 32bit kernels will get updates at a later date, when patches are available.

PS: In case you can't wait, there is mainline kernel 4.14.12 from the PPA with KPTI enabled. It's available, among others, for i386 architecture.
http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v4.14.12/

[mörgæs]

It has never happened before that a supported release does not receive security updates. This is the definition of support.

My guess is that they are working under time pressure and must release the fix coordinated with other operative systems. Because of this the 64 bit task is first in priority.

(Ninja'ed by Mike)

[QIII]

I read an article posted by another user (mikewhatever posted it above as well) that indicated both Microsoft and Linux OSes expect to have official patched and packaged kernels on Tuesday, 9 January. I know that there is already a patched Linux kernel available (and another RC) if one wants to apply it.

[j3984]

What do you do to protect your pc against this memory problem on INtel chips?? 14.04

[pqwoerituytrueiwoq]

What do you do to protect your pc against this memory problem on INtel chips?? 14.04

aside from the normal things like do not run untrusted software on your system i have read this can the exploited via javascript, so i would suggest using noscript to minimize the threat until the patches are out or compile your own kerenl

from all the benchmarks i have seen at phonorix the performance impact is 0 to 2%, affecting wine, and very high I/O operations eg: SQL benchmark

[Frogs Hair]

Relevant to Firefox users and I suspect other browsers are doing the same.

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo.../releasenotes/

[ardouronerous]

Once the kernel update is done, is there a way to test if my computer is still vulnerable?

Thanks.