Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Thu, 18 Apr 2002 07:00:42 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Thu, 18 Apr 2002 07:00:41 -0400 Received: from lightning.swansea.linux.org.uk ([194.168.151.1]:55565 "EHLO the-village.bc.nu") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Thu, 18 Apr 2002 07:00:41 -0400 Subject: Re: SSE related security hole To: andrea@suse.de (Andrea Arcangeli) Date: Thu, 18 Apr 2002 12:18:34 +0100 (BST) Cc: dledford@redhat.com (Doug Ledford), jh@suse.cz, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, jakub@redhat.com, aj@suse.de, ak@suse.de, pavel@atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz In-Reply-To: <20020418072615.I14322@dualathlon.random> from "Andrea Arcangeli" at Apr 18, 2002 07:26:15 AM X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.5 PL6] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: From: Alan Cox Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org > This mean the mmx isn't really backwards compatible and that's > potentially a problem for all the legacy x86 multiuser operative > systems. That's an hardware design bug, not a software problem. In > short running a 2.[02] kernel on a MMX capable CPU isn't secure, the > same potentially applies to windows NT and other unix, no matter of SSE. That was my initial reaction but when I reread the documentation the Intel folks are actually saying even back in Pentium MMX days that it isnt guaranteed that the FP/MMX state are not seperate registers - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/