Meltdown Update Kernel doesnt boot • Hacker News Board

Re: Meltdown Update Kernel doesnt boot

#181

Post by sigi45 » Thu, Jan 11, 2018, 12:00 PM UTC

andrewflnr wrote: post #116

Animats wrote: post #113

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."

it is still way more likely a reasonable design decision for performance reasons than it is for a backdoor.

Alone the risk would not be worth to intel. Do you really think, nsa has enough money to compensate for this backslash and newscoverage?

Re: Meltdown Update Kernel doesnt boot

#182

Post by gkya » Thu, Jan 11, 2018, 12:04 PM UTC

jlgaddis wrote: post #98

gkya wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah ME is a scary thing also. WRT Linux, well my Xubuntu 16.04 (Xenial) is on 4.10 and no new kernels are available to ma ATM. So if they're going to patch my OS, that's probably going to be a backport to that version, not the latest release integrated to my OS version. I guess that's what caused this bug too, although I admit I only skimmed the conversation linked.

They've put out updates for 4.4 and 4.13 (HWE) for 16.04, if that helps. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SecurityTeam/KnowledgeBase/SpectreAn...

I'm guessing that updates for LTS kernel will come later. I don't know if I can update to 4.13.

Re: Meltdown Update Kernel doesnt boot

#183

Post by timonovici » Thu, Jan 11, 2018, 1:02 PM UTC

myth_drannon wrote: post #77

ask098 wrote: 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.

What if that computer is running something critical, say a reactor, and elevator or some device in a hospital? Computers are everywhere these days... Todays proof-of-concept becomes tommorow's metasploit module - and could cause large damage even in incompetent people's hands.

Re: Meltdown Update Kernel doesnt boot

#184

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jan 11, 2018, 1:03 PM UTC

gkya wrote: post #182

jlgaddis wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've put out updates for 4.4 and 4.13 (HWE) for 16.04, if that helps. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SecurityTeam/KnowledgeBase/SpectreAn...

I'm guessing that updates for LTS kernel will come later. I don't know if I can update to 4.13.

[deleted]

Re: Meltdown Update Kernel doesnt boot

#185

Post by jwilk » Thu, Jan 11, 2018, 1:36 PM UTC

ksenzee wrote: post #62

eecc wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has Ubutu botched or did Ubutu botch... please ;)

Muphry's Law strikes again!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry%27s_law

If you write anything criticizing editing or proofreading, there will be a fault of some kind in what you have written.

Re: Meltdown Update Kernel doesnt boot

#186

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jan 11, 2018, 1:38 PM UTC

george3383 wrote: post #79

en4bz wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A * B * C = X

Is this a Fight Club reference?

[deleted]

Re: Meltdown Update Kernel doesnt boot

#187

Post by nkkollaw » Thu, Jan 11, 2018, 2:01 PM UTC

This is a little bit sensationalist (is that a word?).

It's not like Windows that bricks your laptop. It's a handful of hardware config, and you can easily boot with an older kernel.

Re: Meltdown Update Kernel doesnt boot

#188

Post by DarronWyke » Thu, Jan 11, 2018, 2:51 PM UTC

Santosh83 wrote: post #155

topmonk wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would think it would be. The strange thing is the markets didn't react at all. They actually went up on January 4th.

Because this has largely remained theoretical, unlike Maersk or Equifax.

What are you talking about? We've seen working POCs since last week. This isn't "largely theoretical", this is an actively exploitable hole.

Re: Meltdown Update Kernel doesnt boot

#189

Post by lscotte » Thu, Jan 11, 2018, 2:55 PM UTC

gkya wrote: post #69

bArray wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Would this entire Meltdown/Spectre thing count as the biggest mess-up of computing history? When yesterday the PoC repo was posted here, the spy.mp4 demo video gave me some chills. It must be up there amongst the greats, probably with the "halt and catch fire" op code. Normally they just patch this stuff with microcode and never really tell anybody, this time that won't work. I'm not entirely convinced it was a mist…

Yeah ME is a scary thing also. WRT Linux, well my Xubuntu 16.04 (Xenial) is on 4.10 and no new kernels are available to ma ATM. So if they're going to patch my OS, that's probably going to be a backport to that version, not the latest release integrated to my OS version. I guess that's what caused this bug too, although I admit I only skimmed the conversation linked.

Note there won't be fixes for 4.10, as it's reached EOL for Ubuntu, so you'll need to move to the 4.13 patched kernel.

Re: Meltdown Update Kernel doesnt boot

#190

Post by lscotte » Thu, Jan 11, 2018, 2:58 PM UTC

gkya wrote: post #182

jlgaddis wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've put out updates for 4.4 and 4.13 (HWE) for 16.04, if that helps. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SecurityTeam/KnowledgeBase/SpectreAn...

I'm guessing that updates for LTS kernel will come later. I don't know if I can update to 4.13.

LTS for xenial is 4.4, and patches have already been released for it.