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Meltdown Update Kernel doesnt boot

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Re: Meltdown Update Kernel doesnt boot

#171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the paper, Meltdown can recover memory at about 500 kb/s

It's still "only" 1.7gb/hour. If programs follow reasonable security practices, it shouldn't be possible to stumble upon secrets in the memory. This underlines the importance of things such as ASLR and not holding your key in memory longer than needed and rotating them as well.

Once you know the location, if the process is not randomized, you can extract from that location. You may assume some things about implementation (e.g. libstdc++ or libc++, glibc memory allocator, general compiler version)

Additionally some hardening methods like stack protector make stack allocated objects stand out a lot from register values.

Re: Meltdown Update Kernel doesnt boot

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I read somewhere the other day that this form of error/attack was conceived of in the academic literature back in 1992. I won’t believe it’s intentional without evidence in that direction, but this is conceivably the kind of obscure/complex attack you’d expect of a state actor.

This has been a known issue in xbox 360 hardware since about 2010. It just keeps popping up, someone finally thought to weaponize it.

>It just keeps popping up, someone finally thought to weaponize it.

Someone published its weaponization, you mean :)

Re: Meltdown Update Kernel doesnt boot

#173
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What modern systems even map memory to 0x0? Doing so breaks the C standard, among other things.

http://infocenter.arm.com/help/index.jsp?topic=/com.arm.doc.... > On system reset, the vector table is fixed at address 0x00000000. Also, I'm not an expert on the C standard, but in my understanding, it doesn't "break" it. That is: * Address 0 and the null pointer are distinct * A 0 literal treated as a pointer is guaranteed to be the null pointer * The null pointer is not guaranteed to be represented by all zero bit…

Yeah, the NULL pointer is a pretty weird part of the standard - it makes some sense, but leads to weird situations. That said, I think your last point needs a bit of clarification. What you've described is actually already impossible per the standard - with a few exceptions, it is illegal to use pointer arithmetic to address past the size of an allocated object (Because those pointer values may not even be valid for the architecture), so it is technically impossible to use pointer arithmetic on a valid pointer to end-up with the NULL pointer - it would require calculating an address outside of the current object.

So the question of what happens when you actually do that is purely up to your compiler and architecture. In most cases, if you manage to get the NULL pointer value through pointer arithmetic, it will still compare equal to the 'actual' NULL pointer and treated as if it was a literal 0, so that doesn't allow you to get around NULL pointer checks. The only situation where it really matters if the NULL is only known at runtime, since that may have implications on optimizations. Since dereferencing the NULL pointer being undefined behavior, the compiler can remove such dereferences, but it can't remove the dereference completely if it can't prove the pointer is always NULL. There is nothing preventing the compiler from adding extra NULL checks in that aren't in your code however, which would foil the plan of generating a NULL pointer at runtime to dereference it. So unless your compiler explicitly allows otherwise, you cannot reliably access the memory located at the value of the NULL pointer - as far as the standard is concerned, there is no such thing.

Talking specifically about the ARM vector table, that largely works ok because only the CPU ever has to actually read that structure, normally you C code won't have to touch it (If you even define it in your C code. The example ARM programs define the vector table in assembly instead). If you did ever have a reason to read the first entry of that table from C though, you could potentially run into issues (Though I would consider it unlikely, since the location of the vector table isn't decided until link-time, at which point your code is already compiled).

On that note, it's worth adding that POSIX requires NULL to be represented by all zero bits, which is useful. Lots/most programs actually rely on this behavior, since it is pretty ubiquitous to use `memset` to clear structures, and that only writes zero bits.

(Sorry for the long comment, I've just always found this particular part of the standard to be very interesting)

Re: Meltdown Update Kernel doesnt boot

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/4.4.0-109.132 : linux (4.4.0-109.132) xenial; urgency=low * linux: 4.4.0-109.132 -proposed tracker (LP: #1742252) * Kernel trace with xenial 4.4 (4.4.0-108.131, Candidate kernels for PTI fix) (LP: #1741934) - SAUCE: kaiser: fix perf crashes - fix to original commit diff'ing the two changes it was this: > diff -u linux-4.4.0/arch/x86/events/intel/ds.c linux-4.4.0/arch/x86/eve…

They consider a bug that renders the OS unable to boot a "low" urgency!?!

Given this seems to be affecting a relatively small number of systems, that's not necessarily unreasonable. It might be very urgent for the people affected, but still low urgency for the userbase overall as compared to other problems.

Though it seems more likely to me that this bug was filed as a placeholder for the already-written patch and verification thereof, and the person filing it simply didn't bother with the urgency field since it wasn't really a bug-report-as-such.

Re: Meltdown Update Kernel doesnt boot

#175
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> failed NSA launch I didn't hear about that one

Maybe this https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2018/1/9/16866806/spac...

To which no government agency is officially attached and the failed thing is more a rumor. SpaceX said that on Falcon 9 side everything worked like it should and NG says they cannot comment on classified payloads. So there's literally no information.

Re: Meltdown Update Kernel doesnt boot

#176
post #93
post #2

it's the fault of Intel, why don't they recall all the CPU? just like vehicle company

And replace them with what? They don't have any current processor that doesn't have the same bugs. It will be years before they design and make one. The best we can do is some class action and get a refund, but not too much or they'll go broke and close.

> And replace them with what?

An AMD CPU?

Re: Meltdown Update Kernel doesnt boot

#178
post #2

it's the fault of Intel, why don't they recall all the CPU? just like vehicle company

Faulty vehicle it's a potential accident with multiple casualities vs a hacked computer with potential loss of your private emails or whatever.

Or just a case of emissions violation?

Re: Meltdown Update Kernel doesnt boot

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Intel Management Engine is a backdoor. Speed variations in speculative execution are an inherent property of the technology. Until recently, few people thought this was exploitable, and it took a lot of work to figure out how to exploit this.

You do realize those are ideal properties for a backdoor, don't you? If you were writing the spec for a dream backdoor, you would write that down. The only way you could improve it would be "everyone thinks it's impossible, and they never figure it out."

This backdoor is too tricky to be a backdoor. A simpler backdoor would be "Call this opcode 45 times, followed by another opcode 20 times, and you will have activated backdoor mode where these opcodes are now available"...

Re: Meltdown Update Kernel doesnt boot

#180
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's absolutely unreasonable to imply that this was intentional. Besides the massive amount of complexity these systems have, there are plenty of "legitimate" places to hide backdoors, instead of in a performance architecture decision. Keep in mind that whatever "evil agencies" would have asked for this would most likely find themselves vulnerable, and nobody would sign off on. I do agree, however, the "secur…

Adding a backdoor seems unreasonable but they may have chosen performance over security. Even if this individual bug wasn't intentional they are responsible for setting their priorities.

There are CPUs available which choose security over performance. They aren't made by Intel, but you can buy them, and they're even cheaper.

Oh, you don't want to do that?

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