Re: [PATCH] x86/speculation: Add document to describe Spectre and its mitigations

[Pavel Machek <pavel@ucw.cz>]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 3150 bytes --]

On Mon 2019-01-14 00:12:59, Jiri Kosina wrote:
> On Mon, 14 Jan 2019, Pavel Machek wrote:
> 
> > That one really is Intel-specific (not even all x86s are affectd). Same 
> > for Meltdown.
> 
> At least for Meltdown, your claim is simply not correct.

You are right, there may be few ARM chips affected by meltdown.

I don't know about any non-Intel affected by l1tf.

...and its documentation is just plain wrong, explaining I'm protected
when I'm not...

commit f372cd79be31382ae6030a1f15638cc7fe9eeb9f
Author: Pavel <pavel@ucw.cz>
Date:   Thu Jan 3 00:48:40 2019 +0100

    Ok, I guess L1TF was a lot of fun, and there was not time for a good
    documentation.
    
    There's admin guide that is written as an advertisment, and
    unfortunately is slightly "inaccurate" at places (to the point of
    lying).
    
    Plus, I believe it should go to x86/ directory, as this is really
    Intel issue, and not anything ARM (or RISC-V) people need to know.
    
    Signed-off-by: Pavel Machek <pavel@ucw.cz>

diff --git a/Documentation/admin-guide/l1tf.rst b/Documentation/admin-guide/l1tf.rst
index 9af9773..05c5422 100644
--- a/Documentation/admin-guide/l1tf.rst
+++ b/Documentation/admin-guide/l1tf.rst
@@ -1,10 +1,11 @@
 L1TF - L1 Terminal Fault
 ========================
 
-L1 Terminal Fault is a hardware vulnerability which allows unprivileged
-speculative access to data which is available in the Level 1 Data Cache
-when the page table entry controlling the virtual address, which is used
-for the access, has the Present bit cleared or other reserved bits set.
+L1 Terminal Fault is a hardware vulnerability on most recent Intel x86
+CPUs which allows unprivileged speculative access to data which is
+available in the Level 1 Data Cache when the page table entry
+controlling the virtual address, which is used for the access, has the
+Present bit cleared or other reserved bits set.
 
 Affected processors
 -------------------
@@ -76,12 +77,14 @@ Attack scenarios
    deterministic and more practical.
 
    The Linux kernel contains a mitigation for this attack vector, PTE
-   inversion, which is permanently enabled and has no performance
-   impact. The kernel ensures that the address bits of PTEs, which are not
-   marked present, never point to cacheable physical memory space.
-
-   A system with an up to date kernel is protected against attacks from
-   malicious user space applications.
+   inversion, which is permanently enabled and has no measurable
+   performance impact in most configurations. The kernel ensures that
+   the address bits of PTEs, which are not marked present, never point
+   to cacheable physical memory space. On x86-32, this physical memory
+   needs to be limited to 2GiB to make mitigation effective.
+
+   Mitigation is present in kernels v4.19 and newer, and in
+   recent -stable kernels.
 
 2. Malicious guest in a virtual machine
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^


-- 
(english) http://www.livejournal.com/~pavelmachek
(cesky, pictures) http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~pavel/picture/horses/blog.html

[-- Attachment #2: Digital signature --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 181 bytes --]