Re: [RFC 04/10] x86/mm: Only flush indirect branches when switching into non dumpable process

[Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>]

On Sun, Jan 21, 2018 at 12:04:03PM -0000, David Woodhouse wrote:
> > So if I understand it right, this is only needed if the 'other'
> > executable itself is susceptible to spectre. If say someone audited gpg
> > for spectre-v1 and build it with retpoline, it would be safe to not
> > issue the IBPB, right?
> 
> 
> Spectre V2 not v1. V1 is separate.
> For V2 retpoline is enough... as long as all the libraries have it too.

Ah, easy then. So we need this toolchain bit and then simply rebuild
works and everything is happy again, well except of course those people
running closed sores binaries, but meh.. :-)

> > I realize that this is all future work, because so far auditing for v1
> > is a lot of pain (we need better tools), but would it be something that
> > makes sense in the longer term?
> 
> It's *only* retpoline so it isn't actually that much. Although I'm wary of
> Cc'ing HJ on such thoughts because he seems to never sleep and always
> respond promptly with "OK I did that... " :)
> 
> If we did systematically do this in userspace we'd probably want to do
> external thunks there too, and a flag in the auxvec to tell it not to
> bother (for IBRS_ALL etc.).

Right, so if its v2/retpoline only, we really should do this asap and
then rebuild world on distros (or arch/gentoo people could read a book
or something).