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    PfSense 2.5 will only work with AES-NI capable CPUs

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General pfSense Questions
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    • 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

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      • 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/

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        • 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/

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          • 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 ;)

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            • 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.)

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              • 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.

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                • 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/

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                  • 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.

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                    • 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/

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                      • 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.

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                        • 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.

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                          • 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.

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                            • 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.

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                              • 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?

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                                • 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 ?

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                                  • 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.

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                                    • R
                                      remlei
                                      last edited by

                                      pfsense is seriously wants their userbase go hell way down now arent they?

                                      in reality, most users who use pfsense use it because they can be installed in almost any hardware that has 2 or more nics, now after 2.5, you cant do that shit anymore. kthxbye.

                                      can they just create a pfsense 2.5 AES-NI edition (and non aes-ni edition) or something along those line and everyone will be fine?

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                                      • W
                                        W4RH34D
                                        last edited by

                                        @remlei:

                                        pfsense is seriously wants their userbase go hell way down now arent they?

                                        in reality, most users who use pfsense use it because they can be installed in almost any hardware that has 2 or more nics, now after 2.5, you cant do that shit anymore. kthxbye.

                                        can they just create a pfsense 2.5 AES-NI edition (and non aes-ni edition) or something along those line and everyone will be fine?

                                        You can ebay a used dell/hp xeon 6 core 3.33ghz for like $300.

                                        Did you really check your cables?

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                                        • ivorI
                                          ivor
                                          last edited by

                                          @remlei:

                                          pfsense is seriously wants their userbase go hell way down now arent they?

                                          in reality, most users who use pfsense use it because they can be installed in almost any hardware that has 2 or more nics, now after 2.5, you cant do that shit anymore. kthxbye.

                                          can they just create a pfsense 2.5 AES-NI edition (and non aes-ni edition) or something along those line and everyone will be fine?

                                          Please do not be rude or exaggerate. We are giving everyone a heads up for almost two years in advance, they will require a CPU from 2011 or newer. When pfSense 2.5 is released, pfSense 2.4 will be supported for another year or so.

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

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                                          • R
                                            reggie14
                                            last edited by

                                            @ivor:

                                            We are giving everyone a heads up for almost two years in advance, they will require a CPU from 2011 or newer. When pfSense 2.5 is released, pfSense 2.4 will be supported for another year or so.

                                            To be fair, not all chips released in/after 2011 included AES-NI.  The low-power Celerons come to mind.

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