Received-SPF: pass (google.com: best guess record for domain of linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org designates 209.132.180.67 as permitted sender) client-ip=209.132.180.67;
MIME-Version: 1.0
Reply-To: whiteheadm@acm.org
In-Reply-To: <63ca28c5acb64de5ba33a81b6da5c507@AcuMS.aculab.com>
References: <CAP8WD_YnJnQW9o+t2jn6HRrY3kKQMRD44joP=thPYO5vS4ev7Q@mail.gmail.com>
 <1517950494.3677.30.camel@infradead.org> <CAP8WD_ZaewC-NE4szBzU3brvNhvV9PwoVo-uDFcEMTMWVbsxQQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <201802070918.18978.linux@rainbow-software.org> <20180208134908.4b516794@alans-desktop>
 <CAK8P3a2kuHXpJOVKux2v-B_=CrpnQBTMfV24sJqY+nQaSMf+KA@mail.gmail.com> <63ca28c5acb64de5ba33a81b6da5c507@AcuMS.aculab.com>
From:   tedheadster <tedheadster@gmail.com>
Date:   Thu, 8 Feb 2018 12:50:26 -0500
Message-ID: <CAP8WD_bF4jFQL=hOXRx97cyciq40MTJ9j8QwvJzLsn+LQudkmg@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [BUG] x86 : i486 reporting to be vulnerable to Meltdown/Spectre_V1/Spectre_V2
To:     David Laight <David.Laight@aculab.com>
Cc:     Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>,
        Alan Cox <gnomes@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>,
        Ondrej Zary <linux@rainbow-software.org>,
        David Woodhouse <dwmw2@infradead.org>,
        Guenter Roeck <linux@roeck-us.net>,
        Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>,
        Hugh Dickins <hughd@google.com>,
        Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@linux.intel.com>,
        Jiri Kosina <jikos@kernel.org>, Borislav Petkov <bp@alien8.de>,
        Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>,
        Jamie Iles <jamie@jamieiles.com>,
        Eduardo Valentin <eduval@amazon.com>,
        Laura Abbott <labbott@redhat.com>,
        Rik van Riel <riel@surriel.com>,
        Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>,
        Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org
Precedence: bulk

On Thu, Feb 8, 2018 at 12:02 PM, David Laight <David.Laight@aculab.com> wrote:
> From: Arnd Bergmann
>> Sent: 08 February 2018 15:23
> ...
>> The Winchip is what eventually turned into the VIA Nano, which does
>> have speculative execution, but I don't think the earlier C3 and C7 did,
>> they are much closer to the original Winchip design.
>
> We had terrible trouble getting (IIRC) the C7 to execute functions
> that were called in 16bit mode and returned in 32bit mode and v.v.
> (for boot code bios calls).
> The problems seemed to imply that it was caching return addresses
> and the translation (to uops) of the instructions that followed.
> So it would effectively decode the first few bytes in the wrong mode.
> So there might be scope for one of these attacks.
>
> OTOH these devices were so slow that I doubt any are used for anything
> serious - and certainly won't get a kernel update even if they are.
>
> Also worth nothing that the difference between the cpu and memory
> speeds is much lower - so far fewer instructions could be speculatively
> executed while waiting a cache miss.
>
> Tempting to disable everything.
>
>         David

You might think this absolutely crazy, but I would be willing to test
such systems if I can get my hands on the needed hardware that I lack.
I am already doing sanity testing on Intel
i486/i586/i586-MMX/i686-PentiumPro systems, I just don't have the
clone cpus (Cyrix, etc).

While few people are using the 32bit kernel, I don't think we want to
kill it completely just yet.

- Matthew