Massive security hole in CPU's incoming?Official Meltdown/Spectre Discussion Thread

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realibrad

Lifer
Oct 18, 2013
12,337
898
126
Thats complete BS, maybe they should look at the actual benchmarks before responding they would look alot less like idiots.

This is moving fast, and knowing how these things usually work, the message was likely approved earlier in the day, and was out dated by the time it was posted.
 

slashy16

Member
Mar 24, 2017
151
59
71
People need to wait for real benchmarks. Showing different versions of windows10 on a single Intel CPU proves nothing. Of course, Windows10 with different SP levels will perform differently. You think drivers out now will be tuned for an OS that won't be out for months? lol
 

Atari2600

Golden Member
Nov 22, 2016
1,409
1,655
136
Name dropping AMD is a bold move after an engineer claims they are not affected.

Its real cheeky naming AMD. Clearly attempting to sow seeds of FUD that it affects all parties equally.

AMD should counter release, indeed take out adverts, saying "our CPUs are now industry leading on performance while having a track record of delivering secure operations, unlike some others who have had issues such as [insert vendor and bugs here]"
 

ZippZ

Member
Jul 24, 2000
108
13
81
The Intel response seems to be very carefully worded and doesn't debunk any of the rumors here.

"...have the potential to improperly gather sensitive data from computing devices that are operating as designed. Intel believes these exploits do not have the potential to corrupt, modify or delete data."

Intel doesn't dispute that data can be stolen with this flaw.

"Recent reports that these exploits are caused by a “bug” or a “flaw” and are unique to Intel products are incorrect."
I think someone mentioned it could affect ARM processors too. Still leaves the possibility that AMD isn't affected by this specific issue.

Also I'm sure all processors could be affected in general through some yet to be discovered flaw, but that's not really relevant to this issue.


"Contrary to some reports, any performance impacts are workload-dependent, and, for the average computer user, should not be significant and will be mitigated over time."
This appears true from the rumored benchmarks that it won't affect most users. But this still appears to majorly affect virtualization and cloud customers.
 

Herr Kutz

Platinum Member
Jun 14, 2009
2,545
242
106
Quick answer is yes. If today you are able to use a system with a Intel Processor and are using Windows 7 or later, when this patch comes out, whatever affect it is going to have on any given application, your system will receive that performance penalty. The question now is what the actual application impact we will see.

Most concerned about having 10-20 firefox tabs with flash videos at once. That's probably the most resource intensive use my computers see.
 

Topweasel

Diamond Member
Oct 19, 2000
5,436
1,654
136
Most concerned about having 10-20 firefox tabs with flash videos at once. That's probably the most resource intensive use my computers see.

This is one of those wait and see answers. Your computer will be affected. Whether or not you will feel any tangible difference from being affected is a whole nother bag. IO heavy tasks seem the most impacted, so you probably won't see much of a difference.
 

LTC8K6

Lifer
Mar 10, 2004
28,520
1,575
126
I'll wait until the credits roll.

I'm very tired of the typical internet roller coaster ride with these types of stories.
 
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zinfamous

No Lifer
Jul 12, 2006
110,515
29,100
146
This is moving fast, and knowing how these things usually work, the message was likely approved earlier in the day, and was out dated by the time it was posted.

supposedly Apple patched this a month ago, so it was known. Meaning, Intel knew about it. Nothing is really moving fast or outdated from Intel's perspective. This is just pure FUD.
 
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realibrad

Lifer
Oct 18, 2013
12,337
898
126
supposedly Apple patched this a month ago, so it was known. Meaning, Intel knew about it. Nothing is really moving fast or outdated from Intel's perspective. This is just pure FUD.

They likely thought that it would not get out. They could not really prepare a statement because there is no way of knowing how it would be received. Once they started seeing how this would look, they fast tracked a response that was meant distract. So its a mixture of FUD, but it was a mistake because of what we now know.
 

WelshBloke

Lifer
Jan 12, 2005
30,341
7,989
136
supposedly Apple patched this a month ago, so it was known. Meaning, Intel knew about it. Nothing is really moving fast or outdated from Intel's perspective. This is just pure FUD.
Well I haven't heard of a drastic drop in Mac Book performance so maybe this is going to be OK for the home user?
 
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zinfamous

No Lifer
Jul 12, 2006
110,515
29,100
146
They likely thought that it would not get out. They could not really prepare a statement because there is no way of knowing how it would be received. Once they started seeing how this would look, they fast tracked a response that was meant distract. So its a mixture of FUD, but it was a mistake because of what we now know.

earlier, you suggested that Intel was very likely unaware of this flaw until yesterday (because they said so). Now, you're open to them knowing about it, but just assuming that no one else would figure it out, so no need to worry about spinning it.
 
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realibrad

Lifer
Oct 18, 2013
12,337
898
126
earlier, you suggested that Intel was very likely unaware of this flaw until yesterday (because they said so). Now, you're open to them knowing about it, but just assuming that no one else would figure it out, so no need to worry about spinning it.

Correct, they likely only became aware in the recent past. I doubt they knew about this flaw from 10+ years back, but they did know about it before today. This is why there has been work done to address this issue. They likely thought they could keep this all under wraps until it was fixed, which is not what happened. What they also did not know was how this would play out if the public got this information, so a statement would be almost impossible. What they did was rush through a response to try and get ahead of this and things changed so now it makes them look stupid.

So, they did not know about it back when it first happened.
They likely found out relatively recently.
Tried to spin because they have made missteps and its blowing up in their face.

I would say there is likely far more to come considering how big this issue is and how impactful this bug fix is.
 

bryanW1995

Lifer
May 22, 2007
11,144
32
91
intel always REDACTED cheats.

Profanity is not allowed or tolerated in the tech sub forums.
Do not let this happen again.

Iron Woode
Super Moderator

Wait, we have a Mod named "Iron Woode", and he doesn't like profanity??? You can't make this stuff up! :)

I switched to Intel a long time ago, looks like it's time to go back to AMD.

Another thing moderators don't like (or allow)
is being called out in threads.
Regardless of the moderator's username,
profanity is not allowed in the tech forums.

AT Mod Usandthem
 
Last edited by a moderator:
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May 11, 2008
19,306
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Wait, we have a Mod named "Iron Woode", and he doesn't like profanity??? You can't make this stuff up! :)

I switched to Intel a long time ago, looks like it's time to go back to AMD.

Some trees in the US are considered extremely tough material. Perhaps that is where the name originated from. :)
 

slashy16

Member
Mar 24, 2017
151
59
71
I just received an email from Amazon regarding several hundred of our VM's. There will be a forced reboot of many of our instances on JAN04. It looks like Amazon is on top of this and has known about it for some time. I'm interested to know if they are pathing their physical servers or their hypervisor software. My guess is their Hypervisor.

Hello,

We previously advised you of important security and operational updates which will require a reboot of one or more of your Amazon EC2 instances in the AP-SOUTHEAST-2 region. Unfortunately, we must accelerate the planned reboot times for these instances given anticipated publication of new research findings.

The new maintenance window has been scheduled between January 4, 2017 at 8:00 AM UTC (12:00AM PST) and January 4, 2017 at 2:00 PM UTC (6:00AM PST) during which the EC2 service will automatically perform the required reboot. During the maintenance window, the affected instance will be unavailable for a short period of time as it reboots. We will be performing this maintenance in a single Availability Zone of each Region at a time. For more information on EC2 maintenance, please see our documentation here: https://aws.amazon.com/maintenance-help/ .

To avoid your scheduled reboot, you are able to reboot this instance any time prior to the maintenance window. More details on rebooting your instances yourself can be found here:
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/ec2-instance-reboot.html

To see which of your instances are impacted, please visit the 'Events' page on the EC2 console to view your instances that are scheduled for maintenance:



Sincerely,
Amazon Web Services
 

Adul

Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
32,999
44
91
danny.tangtam.com
They are definitely trying to deflect some of the issue here, but it is true that companies will need to do their own evaluations on performance impacts from this change. There could be less impact from Microsoft versus linux systems here. We need more in depth checks than these quick benchmarks we have seen.
 

Rifter

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
11,522
751
126
They are definitely trying to deflect some of the issue here, but it is true that companies will need to do their own evaluations on performance impacts from this change. There could be less impact from Microsoft versus linux systems here. We need more in depth checks than these quick benchmarks we have seen.

I agree, we need one of the big sites to do a thorough investigation, something the anandtech of old would have been great for.
 
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