Intel Linux Patch Would Report Outdated CPU Microcode As A Security Vulnerability
Intel Linux Patch Would Report Outdated CPU Microcode As A Security Vulnerability
How about a Linux Patch that reports binary blobs wirh no source AS __ Security Vulnerabilities __
Or are we not allowed to criticize the back doors that hackers gain access to.
The real thing is: can you update the microcode of older CPUs? If not then it's a marketing strategy.
It sounds like the criterion is "is newer microcode available". So it doesn't look like a marketing strategy to sell new CPUs.
I mean, it’s still good to know if you’re vulnerable right (for sake of discussion)?
@GolfNovemberUniform @captainkangaroo Yes and Linux includes software to do this.
Microcode would not be a concern with that particular CPU.
So the patch is just copying the existing warning to a standard location?
How does it know if the microcode is outdated?
@ryannathans @captainkangaroo I'm going to make the wild assumption that the kernel will have a table of the current microcode versions at the time of it's release, but I doubt that
will get updated except by kernel upgrades.
The Linux kernel would maintain a list of the latest Intel microcode versions for each CPU family, which is based on the data from the Intel microcode GitHub repository. In turn this list would need to be kept updated with new Linux kernel releases and as Intel pushes out new CPU microcode files.
Sounds like that would be outdated for everyone without a rolling distro.
Sounds like a user space application, there's no place for this in the kernel. So would you need to upgrade kennel and reboot to update the list? Nonsense.
Yeah, methinks this will be one of those alerts pretty much everyone will be like "yeah, yeah, I know" and click to silence those notifications.
Stable distros can and will backport security fixes. Good ones that is.