FreeBSD Security Advisory FreeBSD-SA-18:03.speculative_execution

[Andrea Venturoli]

On 03/18/18 18:54, Jan Demter wrote:

>> Of course I find this enabled on the Intel box and not on the AMD one, 
>> but... is PTI in any way affected by a microcode update from Intel?
> 
>  From what I have read so far, I'm pretty certain it isn't planned or 
> even possible to patch this via a microcode update.

Ok, I'm wrong then: I understood Spectre was unfixable, while Intel had 
provided (or was going to provide) a microcode update to patch (not 
mitigate) MeltDown.

Of course PTI might be a good idea in any case.






> For Intel CPUs, there's this list:
> https://newsroom.intel.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/11/2018/03/microcode-update-guidance.pdf 

Thanks. Altough I was looking for AMD mostly :)



> The microcode update itself will work, if that is what you meant, but 
> just updating the microcode and not FreeBSD is useless to mitigate 
> Spectre V2.

Again, my fault: the "Please update your system in order to update CPU 
microcode." message led me to a wrong conclusion.



  bye & Thanks
	av.