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    PfSense 2.5 will only work with AES-NI capable CPUs

    General pfSense Questions
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    • W
      W4RH34D
      last edited by

      @VAMike:

      @W4RH34D:

      @thehammer86:

      Push the AES-NI requirement to pfSense 3.0 roadmap.

      Lots of people here have re-purposed older hardware which they have under-volted and under-clocked with the plan to dial it up as needs arise..

      Dropping 32-bit support recently was understandable but this is ludicrous!

      Is it?  Or is it ludicrous to be running any internet facing hardware that is 6 years after EOL.

      The first one.

      Well you could always go back to carrier pigeon, they don't have any of those ludicrous hardware acceleration instruction sets.

      Did you really check your cables?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • V
        VAMike
        last edited by

        @W4RH34D:

        @VAMike:

        @W4RH34D:

        @thehammer86:

        Push the AES-NI requirement to pfSense 3.0 roadmap.

        Lots of people here have re-purposed older hardware which they have under-volted and under-clocked with the plan to dial it up as needs arise..

        Dropping 32-bit support recently was understandable but this is ludicrous!

        Is it?  Or is it ludicrous to be running any internet facing hardware that is 6 years after EOL.

        The first one.

        Well you could always go back to carrier pigeon, they don't have any of those ludicrous hardware acceleration instruction sets.

        I see you've gone from the ludicrous to the absurd. The strength of your argument is clear.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • W
          W4RH34D
          last edited by

          @VAMike:

          @W4RH34D:

          @VAMike:

          @W4RH34D:

          @thehammer86:

          Push the AES-NI requirement to pfSense 3.0 roadmap.

          Lots of people here have re-purposed older hardware which they have under-volted and under-clocked with the plan to dial it up as needs arise..

          Dropping 32-bit support recently was understandable but this is ludicrous!

          Is it?  Or is it ludicrous to be running any internet facing hardware that is 6 years after EOL.

          The first one.

          Well you could always go back to carrier pigeon, they don't have any of those ludicrous hardware acceleration instruction sets.

          I see you've gone from the ludicrous to the absurd. The strength of your argument is clear.

          We may as well be walking on the Sun, right?

          You guys thinking of forking off here at 2.4?  Ya'll can call it PFsenseless.  ;D

          Did you really check your cables?

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • F
            fredfox_uk
            last edited by

            YAY !!!!

            Excuse for me to buy more kit to "test" :D

            Seriously though, 2 years notice? I'll take that.

            My wife bought me an APU2C4 for Christmas to run pfSense, I'll start speccing new hardware in 12 - 16 months time, ready for Christmas.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • A
              athurdent
              last edited by

              Well, feel terribly sorry for you…  :)

              CPU: AMD Embedded G series GX-412TC, 1 GHz quad Jaguar core with 64 bit and AES-NI

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • ivorI
                ivor
                last edited by

                @fredfox_uk:

                YAY !!!!

                Excuse for me to buy more kit to "test" :D

                Seriously though, 2 years notice? I'll take that.

                My wife bought me an APU2C4 for Christmas to run pfSense, I'll start speccing new hardware in 12 - 16 months time, ready for Christmas.

                APU2C4 has AES-NI

                Need help fast? Our support is available 24/7 https://www.netgate.com/support/

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • ivorI
                  ivor
                  last edited by

                  A bit more on AES-NI https://www.netgate.com/blog/more-on-aes-ni.html

                  Need help fast? Our support is available 24/7 https://www.netgate.com/support/

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • F
                    fredfox_uk
                    last edited by

                    @ivor:

                    @fredfox_uk:

                    YAY !!!!

                    Excuse for me to buy more kit to "test" :D

                    Seriously though, 2 years notice? I'll take that.

                    My wife bought me an APU2C4 for Christmas to run pfSense, I'll start speccing new hardware in 12 - 16 months time, ready for Christmas.

                    APU2C4 has AES-NI

                    I know - don't tell the wife though ;)

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • D
                      doktornotor Banned
                      last edited by

                      Hmmm… This

                      the new, pure JS GUI (client) architected as a single page web application.

                      seems much more disturbing than the AES-NI requirement. (Just recovering from a complete JS fiasco experience, only a couple of days old.)

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • J
                        jwt Netgate
                        last edited by

                        JS (on the GUI, not the backend like Ubuquiti attempted via NodeBB) compared to PHP?

                        I'll take JS, every time.

                        p.s.  false equivalence, dude.

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • BBcan177B
                          BBcan177 Moderator
                          last edited by

                          @doktornotor:

                          Hmmm… This

                          the new, pure JS GUI (client) architected as a single page web application.

                          seems much more disturbing than the AES-NI requirement. (Just recovering from a complete JS fiasco experience, only a couple of days old.)

                          No fear when Dok is part of the testing team!!  :P

                          "Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it."

                          Website: http://pfBlockerNG.com
                          Twitter: @BBcan177  #pfBlockerNG
                          Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/pfBlockerNG/new/

                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • A
                            apple4ever Banned
                            last edited by

                            @ivor:

                            A bit more on AES-NI https://www.netgate.com/blog/more-on-aes-ni.html

                            I don't think that makes any more sense. Changing the interface isn't a good reason to drop devices without AES-NI.

                            I'm definitely not happy, as I just bought a nice box 6 months ago without AES-NI support that works great. I was hoping to get a second for HA, and then have these for 4ish years. That's not going to happen now.

                            If this was coming in 3.0 which would be 3-4 years out, I'd understand. But not a year out. I was planning to buy pfSense Gold, but not now.

                            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                            • ivorI
                              ivor
                              last edited by

                              @apple4ever:

                              I was planning to buy pfSense Gold, but not now.

                              Is that supposed to make us feel bad? You are using our product for free. You don't have to use it. I understand you are not happy but don't be disrespectful, please.

                              Need help fast? Our support is available 24/7 https://www.netgate.com/support/

                              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                              • jahonixJ
                                jahonix
                                last edited by

                                @apple4ever:

                                I was hoping to get a second for HA, and then have these for 4ish years.

                                If your goal is to have an HA cluster then go for it now.
                                If your goal is to mainly fiddle with a piece of software then maybe not.

                                You don't have to update a system once a new version is available, you know. "High availability" systems don't need to run the latest release, they need to perform without interruption. No doubt, you can have that with the current release already. For free.

                                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                • V
                                  VAMike
                                  last edited by

                                  @apple4ever:

                                  I don't think that makes any more sense. Changing the interface isn't a good reason to drop devices without AES-NI.

                                  It's not because they're changing the interface, it's because of how they want to implement their cloud service. It's up to you to decide how well your priorities converge with that.

                                  I'm also fascinated that other algorithms are completely unacceptable because reasons. Clearly the pfsense cloud needs more security than google's or amazon's.

                                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                  • jahonixJ
                                    jahonix
                                    last edited by

                                    @VAMike:

                                    … how they want to implement their cloud service ...

                                    That's only a part of it.
                                    Basically the whole SDN is moving to RFC defined APIs and pfSense is moving along. If I understood it correctly, that is.

                                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                    • V
                                      VAMike
                                      last edited by

                                      @jahonix:

                                      @VAMike:

                                      … how they want to implement their cloud service ...

                                      That's only a part of it.
                                      Basically the whole SDN is moving to RFC defined APIs and pfSense is moving along. If I understood it correctly, that is.

                                      I'm sure that is also tremendously important to home users with standalone firewalls.

                                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                      • W
                                        W4RH34D
                                        last edited by

                                        @VAMike:

                                        @jahonix:

                                        @VAMike:

                                        … how they want to implement their cloud service ...

                                        That's only a part of it.
                                        Basically the whole SDN is moving to RFC defined APIs and pfSense is moving along. If I understood it correctly, that is.

                                        I'm sure that is also tremendously important to home users with standalone firewalls.

                                        well there's already a tremendous amount of less-than router products on the market.  What exactly got you to use pfsense in the first place?  Was it because it was generic like all the other solutions or because it has a modular package system with bells and whistles out the yin yang?

                                        Did you really check your cables?

                                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                        • L
                                          lra
                                          last edited by

                                          So requiring hardware AES-NI is to alleviate the concern of software AES timing side-channel attacks within TLS.

                                          From Bernstein's original Pentium III tests it appears to take coordination between the attacker and server to calculate the correlations.  Wouldn't this require nefarious code to be installed on pfSense to coordinate with the attacker to perform a timing side-channel attack ?  If yes, wouldn't installing nefarious code be game-over in the pfSense case long before trying some tedious side-channel attack ?

                                          Additionally multi-core CPU's seems to reduce the effectiveness of such an attack.

                                          From a practical standpoint, is requiring AES-NI really a gotta-have ?  Or would a suitable one-time warning at installation or runtime for multi-core, non-AES-NI hardware be sufficient for all practical purposes ?

                                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                          • R
                                            reggie14
                                            last edited by

                                            @lra:

                                            From Bernstein's original Pentium III tests it appears to take coordination between the attacker and server to calculate the correlations.  Wouldn't this require nefarious code to be installed on pfSense to coordinate with the attacker to perform a timing side-channel attack ?  If yes, wouldn't installing nefarious code be game-over in the pfSense case long before trying some tedious side-channel attack ?

                                            +1

                                            Heck, even allowing a contrived attack model that lets the attacker run code on the victim's computer, and targeting single core Atom machine, the UCSD researchers still couldn't construct anything approaching a realistic attack, concluding:

                                            Therefore, we posit that any data-cache timing attack against x86 processors that does not somehow subvert the prefetcher, physical indexing, and massive memory requirements of modern programs is doomed to fail, to say nothing of the difficulties imposed by multicore processors and hardware AES implementations.

                                            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
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