Official Debian standpoint on Meltdown/Spectre

[Dobeedoo]

Hi,
Is there any official information from Debian about ongoing (hopefully) work to mitigate the Meltdown/Spectre vulnerabilities? What would be sensible action (if any) to take while waiting for an official mitigation? I have of course updated my system to latest, but according to the test script, its still vulnerable and needs further actions.

What have you guys done (so far) to secure your systems?

[Head_on_a_Stick]

Please post the output of

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grep -r . /sys/devices/system/cpu/vulnerabilities

EDIT: bug reports here:

https://security-tracker.debian.org/tra ... -2017-5753
https://security-tracker.debian.org/tra ... -2017-5754
https://security-tracker.debian.org/tra ... -2017-5715

[Head_on_a_Stick]

What would be sensible action (if any) to take while waiting for an official mitigation?

Disable javascript and make sure that all of your packages are up to date.

[bw123]

Hi,
<snip>
What have you guys done (so far) to secure your systems?

I moved all my ASCII nudes to an external drive.

[Dobeedoo]

[quote="Head_on_a_Stick"]Please post the output of

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grep -r . /sys/devices/system/cpu/vulnerabilities

I get the following after running the above command;

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/sys/devices/system/cpu/vulnerabilities/spectre_v2:Vulnerable: Minimal generic ASM retpoline
/sys/devices/system/cpu/vulnerabilities/spectre_v1:Vulnerable
/sys/devices/system/cpu/vulnerabilities/meltdown:Mitigation: PTI


[Head_on_a_Stick]

^ Thanks!

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/sys/devices/system/cpu/vulnerabilities/spectre_v2:Vulnerable: Minimal generic ASM retpoline

That's interesting, both Alpine Linux and Debian are using minimal generic ASM whereas Arch Linux is using full retpoline.

The only real way to protect yourself is to throw away all of your defective CPUs and switch to something open instead

https://riscv.org/

[stevepusser]

Burned all electronic devices with loads of fire and moved into my bunker.

Maybe you have to be using the latest compilers to get full retpoline support.

[bw123]

oh man I think they got nmy girly pics!!

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$ grep -r . /sys/devices/system/cpu/vulnerabilities
grep: /sys/devices/system/cpu/vulnerabilities: No such file or directory
b17@themini:/sys/devices/cpu$ uname -a
Linux themini 4.9.0-5-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 4.9.65-3+deb9u2 (2018-01-04) x86_64 GNU/Linux



[Dobeedoo]

^ Thanks!

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/sys/devices/system/cpu/vulnerabilities/spectre_v2:Vulnerable: Minimal generic ASM retpoline

That's interesting, both Alpine Linux and Debian are using minimal generic ASM whereas Arch Linux is using full retpoline.

The only real way to protect yourself is to throw away all of your defective CPUs and switch to something open instead

https://riscv.org/

LOL! That may be a little harsh, just bought a new one... but wonder if they'd take it back as defective, hehe... If I read the CVE's you posted links to correctly, they say "attack range: local", I suppose that means it can't be exploited from outside my computer/network (assuming my firewall does a descent job)?

[Dobeedoo]

Burned all electronic devices with loads of fire and moved into my bunker.

Maybe you have to be using the latest compilers to get full retpoline support.

Yes, I realize there is no "fix", or at least no easy one. If I got things right, everything needs to be recompiled with retpoline support. I chose Debian for its security thinking and being one of the more stable distributions I know of, so not really worried, but a bit security minded.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

If I read the CVE's you posted links to correctly, they say "attack range: local", I suppose that means it can't be exploited from outside my computer/network

Yes, that's right but Firefox and Chrom{e,ium} and (and some video drivers, apparently) were able to be used as attack vectors (if javascript was enabled) but this did not apply to firefox-esr, which is nice.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

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$ grep -r . /sys/devices/system/cpu/vulnerabilities
grep: /sys/devices/system/cpu/vulnerabilities: No such file or directory

AMD machine?

[bw123]

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$ grep -r . /sys/devices/system/cpu/vulnerabilities
grep: /sys/devices/system/cpu/vulnerabilities: No such file or directory

AMD machine?

Both intel and amd lack a /sys/devices/system/cpu/vulnerabilities file or direcotry on 4.9.65-3+deb9u2 which is debian stretch latest stable kernel.

I don't know why you guys try and worry me so much, are you even using debian? Is this FUD? Is it SPAM? Are you just clueless or what? I don;t get it!!!!

[Lysander]

What have you guys done (so far) to secure your systems?

Nothing on my Debian setup, apart from lethargically invoking sudo apt update whenever I remember to.

My netbook [Slackware] runs an Atom N270 so is theoretically, and reportedly, immune. By reportedly, I mean that the output of spectre-meltdown-checker states such. Nevertheless, I still perform kernel updates when they are available.

[Thorny]

Nothing on my Debian setup, apart from lethargically invoking sudo apt update whenever I remember to.

I'm pedantic, but you probably already realise that.

I'm fairly sure you mean you invoke apt update and then apt upgrade if called for.
Just so lurkers and the inexperienced are clear.

On distros that I don't boot every time I do the update/upgrade dance as soon as I boot up so they are up to date and I don't forget and risk security. I'm pretty sure you could even script that if you chose to.

Thanks for indulging me, or complain if you want to, I respect your intelligence.