Intel CPUs Massive Security Flaw issue
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@lra:
Our preliminary assessment of Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities suggests that most pfSense use cases without untrusted local users or a multi-tenant context should not be concerned.
Once the FreeBSD project issues a patched release, we will incorporate those patches, test, and release new versions of pfSense.
Engineering question, if the Meltdown and Spectre kernel fixes reduces pfSense performance by 5% or more, is that prudent ?
If Meltdown and Spectre require malicious code running locally, all bets are off, and there are far easier methods to extract credentials.
Bottom line, are the Meltdown and Spectre fixes appropriate for an appliance like pfSense ?
We will know more information once there's a fix in place so I would rather not speculate now. Once the fix is ready, it will be available in snapshots.
For Reference …
DragonFlyBSD Lands Fixes For Meltdown Vulnerability
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=DragonFly-Meltdown-Fixed"... system call performance is reduced, similar to Linux, when the isolation is enabled. DragonFly reports that system calls go from about 100ns to ~350ns. In typcial workloads they say you should "not lose more than 5% performance or so. System-call heavy and interrupt-heavy workloads (network, database, high-speed storage, etc) can lose a lot more performance."
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Our preliminary assessment of Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities suggests that most pfSense use cases without untrusted local users or a multi-tenant context should not be concerned.
Once the FreeBSD project issues a patched release, we will incorporate those patches, test, and release new versions of pfSense.
This makes sense for PFSense itself, but what about packages like Snort and Suricata that actively evaluate untrusted and malicious code all the time?
No they don't, what they do is they analyze patterns in the incoming and outgoing connections on both the IP headers and the data payload level and then make decisions based on rules if there is an active threat going on. None of their operations involve an actual execution of untrusted program code, it would be just plain crazy if such thing was allowed.
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@KOM:
AMD's performance is so far behind that even 30% slower the Intel is still faster and I suspect they have their own issues.
From what I have read, AMD's latest Threadripper CPUs are giving Intel a run for their money, and they're cheaper. As for issues, unless you have something concrete then you can't really make that claim. I've seen others saying the same thing on other tech forums, that this Intel bug is bad but AMD might maybe perhaps possibly have something as bad or worse. It's pure FUD.
Sorry to disagree
Threadripper does nearly half the work clock per cycle of an Intel plus they run much hotter and are less power efficient
Work per clock cycle is an irrelevant measurement unless you are comparing similar architectures and even then, while it may be interesting, it still doesn't really matter. The relative performance of AMD vs. Intel depends on the workload. (This applies to Ryzen vs. Core as well as Epyc vs. Xeon.)
Anandtech rated the ThreadRipper as the best overall workstation processor, taking both price and performance into account. Here is a reference: https://www.anandtech.com/show/11891/best-cpus-for-workstations-2017
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I don't see much of an attack vector on a firewall
What about installs on hypervisors, be it local on, say vmware, or in the cloud at azure or aws?
That's where the fun begins and that's where more valuable data can be sourced from than from your home with a dedicated pfSense machine, right? -
Is is possible for pfSense to load updated CPU microcode at kernel boot as in Linux / windows ?
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Based on what I've read, pfsense users have nothing to worry about if pfsense is installed on a physical machine or if it is installed as a VM along with other virtual appliances on hardware that you own and only you use.
You start having risks when you are one of many subscribers to a cloud service and you have no idea if the other subscribers are running malware that exploits these vulnerabilities.
I'm far more worried that for most of us, the cure will be worse than the disease.
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If I have to trade speed for security, I choose security every time. With Intel, it used to be a win-win but, with recent news… I just don't believe it so blindly anymore. Of course AMD is not the cure to all your problems but it sure starts to seem a little better.
A system with a speed of zero is perfectly secure, and perfectly useless.
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PPP will still be somewhat slow after this gets patched. :)
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http://www.newsweek.com/apple-iphone-chip-vulnerability-most-disturbing-security-issue-decades-771638
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What's more is the Intel CEO sold $24M in stock months AFTER Google advised Intel of the problem, but before it was made public.
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https://www.netgate.com/blog/an-update-on-meltdown-and-spectre.html
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Info for those running on ARM devices:
https://developer.arm.com/support/security-update
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"Once these backports are available, snapshots including the fixes will only be available for pfSense
2.4.x and amd64 architecture."Thank god my D2700 doesn't do branch prediction!
"Our Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure customers are safe as both providers already patched their infrastructure against these vulnerabilities."
I'm dubious that cloud servers are"Safe". Mitigated and cured are not the same thing.
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@https://www.netgate.com/blog/an-update-on-meltdown-and-spectre.html:
The FreeBSD developers will likely wait a bit before starting the backport of these patches to both FreeBSD 11 and 10. Once these backports are available, snapshots including the fixes will only be available for pfSense
2.4.x and amd64 architecture.Did I get that right: you will neither patch the ARM-Branch nor the 2.3.x (32bit) versions of pfSense because you think use cases prevent exploration of current security vulnerabilities?
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Here is 1 example the AMD has 8 cores 16 threads Intel 4 core 8 threads
https://www.tomsguide.com/us/amd-ryzen-benchmarks,review-4232.html
I did not reed the post in detail but at a quick look the Intel did better with less cores , I am not trying to make Intel look better just trying to justify if switching to AMD will be worth it as you still have to buy expensive CPUs like ryzen to get good performance
Keep in mind that games are highly fast core dependant now. DirectX 12 and Vulkan games will not be nearly so fast core dependant in the future. I expect the 1800X will pull ahead in future games. In the long run, AMD CPUs will be better since they specilize at multi-tasking.
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All benchmarks performed before the BIOS upgrades needed to patch the CPUs and the OS patches are meaningless as far as I'm concerned.
To compare apples to apples, we need to compare CPU benchmarks AFTER all the patches are installed.
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Did I get that right: you will neither patch the ARM-Branch nor the 2.3.x (32bit) versions of pfSense because you think use cases prevent exploration of current security vulnerabilities?
ARM doesn't need variant 3 (meltdown) fix. Once fixes for variants 2 and 1 are developed we will incorporate them, if possible. There are no fixes for i386 yet, so we can't comment yet.
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I'm dubious that cloud servers are"Safe". Mitigated and cured are not the same thing.
Safe from the vulnerabilities written about in the blog post.
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From my understanding of the problem all x86 processors are effected but the AMD processors have the ability to turn off the branch prediction feature. It would seem to me that if some bioses can be updated to turn this feature off on Intel Processors than the problem can be minimized without the 5% performance hit. We all want speed and putting the Kernel page file and user page file in the same space was a way for them to achieve this. I don't really think it's fair to blame Intel. Security is really hard and I would say the problem is really at the OS level. OS makers are working on the fix now so I would say everyone is doing their job. I would imagine in the future Intel processors will have the ability to turn the branch prediction off which will fix this issue.
Turning off branch prediction would be a much more significant performance hit. The impact of KPTI is felt on code with a lot of system calls, and has close to zero impact on code that stays in user land. Killing branch prediction would impact everything.
It's also worth pointing out that this isn't a kernel-specific issue, and that side channel attacks can impact any program that tries to isolate untrusted code. (For example, a browser running javascript.) The kernel mitigations don't fix all of those other programs–and AMD CPUs are impacted by this just as much as Intel CPUs.
Both Intel and AMD are affect by Spectre but only Intel ( and the Arms) are effected by Meltdown.
