Intel CPUs Massive Security Flaw issue
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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
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This was true 15 years ago, can't believe they are still the same.
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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
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AMD are hit too
http://bgr.com/2018/01/03/intel-security-flaw-also-arm-amd-macos-already-patched/
The only thing different looks like Intel are doing something about it and AMD has not responded yet
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AMD CPUs are impacted by this just as much as Intel CPUs.
Not true
No, completely true. First, you trimmed off one heck of a lot of context that's really important:
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.
What a lot of fanboys seem to be missing in their urgency to have an intel bonfire is that this is about a class of vulnerabilities, not a specific vulnerability. AMD processors seem at this point to not be vulnerable to one particular mode of attack, but are vulnerable to other modes of attack. And I guarantee that this area of research will get a lot more attention, and there will be other exploit vectors discovered. Side channel attacks have simply not been something that commodity CPU vendors have worried about, so to some degree finding them is like shooting fish in a barrel. (This is true of all the vendors, not just intel.) "Meltdown" is getting most of the press (that which isn't completely confused about the various attack vectors) and is the biggest PITA for shared infrastructure providers, but "Spectre" is actually much harder to fix, and just as relevant to actual users who do things like browse the web. The most straightforward fixes involve giving up any hope of sandboxing potentially malicious code within a process and relying on process isolation instead–which will have a performance impact on everyone's web browsing.
And as long as we're talking about AMD, they really botched up the disclosure timeline by publicly asserting that they weren't vulnerable to certain kinds of cache timing attacks in the context of the linux kpti patches...people are going to think twice before trusting AMD to keep their mouths shut in the future.
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Can you please elaborate a little bit this, so we can understand what you mean? Especially the "most pfSense use cases without untrusted local users or a multi-tenant context ".
The whole pfSense runs as root, including the web interface afaik…My understanding of this is that one application running on the OS would be able to improperly read memory used by other applications. Obviously this is bad if some rogue app/script can pull sensitive data from other apps on a workstation. Also bad if one VM can read data from another. On a dedicated firewall, the OS is not going to be running untrusted apps. I don't see much of an attack vector on a firewall. I certainly wouldn't worry about pfSense until I had Hypervisors, servers, and end user workstations taken care of.
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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.
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 ?
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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 ?
From what I can tell both Meltdown and Spectre use very similar methodologies to gain access to L1 cache memory. Looks like they take advantage of speculative out-of-order features, a form of execution parallelism through predictive execution, to access L1 cache by attempting to create an out-of-order execution on one core while another core processes a prior instruction that is meant to cause an exception. It then produces a race-condition where it tries to access L1 cache from within the out-of-order sequence before the processor has time to terminate the original thread by retiring the whole set of instructions and clearing the L1 of memory and code. During this race condition, perhaps 200 clock cycles, it needs to determine if bits in memory are a 1 or a 0, the details which honestly elude me but seem to involve measuring the time caused by side-effecting the microarchitecture. Even after that it still needs to communicate that outside of the process then using the exception-handling to communicate/raise a couple of registers outside of that thread to the process where it can display the contents to the attacker.
I haven't seen any working meltdown/spectre example code that can get kernel data but a couple that successfully get user-mode memory pages. I'd find it prudent to patch on shared-infrastructure where resources aren't shared at the VM level but at the container level. For pfSense, an attacker would need to have root/wheel access as a prerequisite to the machine, so they wouldn't be needing to compile/inject cache-exploiting code into other processes to see their memory in the first place. For that reason it means it is extremely unlikely to be a primary attack vector on a firewall system.
As for CPU usage, it's difficult to tell what the performance impact will be. PostgreSQL suggests somewhere between 17% ~ 23%. I think it's fairly significant but for a firewall I don't know if anyone will notice. Our pfSense setup uses perhaps 5% ~ 10% CPU performance, so 23% I don't think will be recognizable … but who knows, maybe it'll affect traffic-shaping. For hypervisors I could see the performance impact being noticeable when systems are at or near computing capacity.
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I just came across this:
http://www.pcgamer.com/intel-ceo-sold-39-million-in-company-shares-prior-to-disclosure-of-cpu-security-flaws/ -
This is not a joke anymore. Really.
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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.
Can you please elaborate a little bit this, so we can understand what you mean? Especially the "most pfSense use cases without untrusted local users or a multi-tenant context ".
The whole pfSense runs as root, including the web interface afaik…@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.
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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.
Could you please elaborate/simplify to understand more about this statement?
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https://github.com/corna/me_cleaner/issues/142
::)
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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.
Could you please elaborate/simplify to understand more about this statement?
The vulnerabilities do not affect pfSense in a usual configuration where there are no local users that could have local execution privileges for untrusted code.
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A "Quantum of Solace" for me in that statement - (To coin a phrase)
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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?
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This post is deleted! -
@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.
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There are no fixes for i386 yet, so we can't comment yet.
Well, that's in contrast to "fixes will only be available for pfSense
2.4.x and amd64 architecture".
I'm not a native in this language but "only" usually means exclusively. Correct me if I'm wrong…And who has the final decision at netgate, you or jwt (who wrote the "only" blog post)?
So much for security fixes in the 2.3.x branch ... I know, you said you cannot comment yet.
The "official" announcement of "only 2.4.x branch and amd64" still stands, doesn't it?From a security standpoint this killed the 2.3.x branch - and doing so significantly before reaching the promised lifespan.
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Well, that's in contrast to "fixes will only be available for pfSense
2.4.x and amd64 architecture".
I'm not a native in this language but "only" usually means exclusively. Correct me if I'm wrong…You should really pay more attention to what others say. We can’t implement fixes we don’t have. We will have 64-bit fixes for pfSense 2.4.x but we don’t have anything yet for i386 and it's unclear when or if fixes will be available. You don't seem to understand the magnitude of these vulnerabilities.
And who has the final decision at netgate, you or jwt (who wrote the "only" blog post)?
How is that relevant for this discussion? What's "only" blog post?
So much for security fixes in the 2.3.x branch … I know, you said you cannot comment yet.
That's rude and unwelcome attitude. We promised to support 2.3.x branch for at least a year after 2.4 release but we cannot implement fixes we do not have.
The "official" announcement of "only 2.4.x branch and amd64" still stands, doesn't it?
I'm not sure what you're asking me.
From a security standpoint this killed the 2.3.x branch - and doing so significantly before reaching the promised lifespan.
Vulnerabilities like these and fixing of the same is the main reason why we dropped i386 support, and spent a long time announcing it. Once and if fixes for i386 are available, we will incorporate them. However, predictions like "this killed 2.3.x branch" are not welcome. You are welcome to help in finding solutions but what you're doing is not helpful.
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@https://www.netgate.com/blog/an-update-on-meltdown-and-spectre.html:
fixes will only be available for pfSense
2.4.x and amd64 architecture.Only means exclusively what in return means that neither ARM nor 2.3.x will ever get available fixes, otherwise it wouldn't be "only". jwt would not have written it that way if he didn't mean it.
This has nothing to do with my understanding of the magnitude of these vulnerabilities. This is about a business decision and the language to describe it.
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The FreeBSD Devs have said that initially they are targeting patches for AMD64 (x86-64) in the next couple of weeks for FreeBSD 11.1. They have not said when 32 bit patches will be available, nor have they said when they will patch FreeBSD 10.x releases although they do mention 10.3 and 10.4 in their mailing list. The pfSense team most likely doesn't have much more information at this stage and is probably why the blog post was worded as it is. Hope that helps.
Ref: https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-security/2018-January/009719.html
