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captainkangaroo via Linux 4 months ago • lemmy

Intel Linux Patch Would Report Outdated CPU Microcode As A Security Vulnerability

A patch posted on Thursday by one of Intel's long-time Linux kernel engineers would begin treating outdated Intel CPU microcode as a security vulnerability that would be reported to user-space via the existing sysfs vulnerabilities reporting.

^{www.phoronix.com}

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Nanook 4 months ago friendica (DFRN)

Microcode would not be a concern with that particular CPU.

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ryannathans 4 months ago • lemmy

How does it know if the microcode is outdated?

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Nanook 4 months ago friendica (DFRN)

@ryannathans @captainkangaroo I'm going to make the wild assumption that the kernel will have a table of the current microcode versions at the time of it's release, but I doubt that
will get updated except by kernel upgrades.

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Strit 4 months ago • lemmy

There's probably an efivar that reads the current microcode version.

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DaPorkchop_ 4 months ago • lemmy

Debian-based distros (and probably most othera as well) actually have a package called "intel-microcode" which gets updated fairly regularly.

Nanook 4 months ago friendica (DFRN)

@DaPorkchop_ Oddly, if you build your own kernel and remove the system provided one, the package gets automatically removed as well which is weird, because it is really still needed regardless.

ryannathans 4 months ago • lemmy

If that's the case, why wouldn't they put the microcode in the kernel?

Nanook 4 months ago friendica (DFRN)

@ryannathans Why bloat the kernel with the microcode for every intel processor that might need it (and there is a similar thing for AMD) when you don't have that specific processor? It does make more sense for it to be a separate, especially on memory constrained systems. I mean if you've got 256GB of RAM probably not a big deal but if you've got 256MB a big deal.

ryannathans 4 months ago • lemmy

The kernel compilation is already configurable between megabytes and gigabyte+

Distros pick their featureset

This entry was edited (4 months ago)

Cousin Mose 4 months ago • lemmy

I mean, it’s still good to know if you’re vulnerable right (for sake of discussion)?

This entry was edited (4 months ago)

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Nanook 4 months ago friendica (DFRN)

@GolfNovemberUniform @captainkangaroo Yes and Linux includes software to do this.

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IrritableOcelot 4 months ago • lemmy

The article does specify that it would report if the newest version of the firmware for the CPU family is not installed, so it doesn't seem like this is that particular kind of BS.

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stuner 4 months ago • lemmy

It sounds like the criterion is "is newer microcode available". So it doesn't look like a marketing strategy to sell new CPUs.

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ouch 4 months ago • lemmy

The Linux kernel would maintain a list of the latest Intel microcode versions for each CPU family, which is based on the data from the Intel microcode GitHub repository. In turn this list would need to be kept updated with new Linux kernel releases and as Intel pushes out new CPU microcode files.

Sounds like that would be outdated for everyone without a rolling distro.

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Atemu 4 months ago • lemmy

Stable distros can and will backport security fixes. Good ones that is.

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AndrewZabar 4 months ago • lemmy

Yeah, methinks this will be one of those alerts pretty much everyone will be like "yeah, yeah, I know" and click to silence those notifications.

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trolololol 4 months ago • lemmy

Sounds like a user space application, there's no place for this in the kernel. So would you need to upgrade kennel and reboot to update the list? Nonsense.

This entry was edited (4 months ago)

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electricprism 4 months ago • lemmy

How about a Linux Patch that reports binary blobs wirh no source AS __ Security Vulnerabilities __

Or are we not allowed to criticize the back doors that hackers gain access to.

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mvirts 4 months ago • lemmy

So the patch is just copying the existing warning to a standard location?

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