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Linus Torvalds Growing Frustrated By Buggy Hardware & Theoretical CPU Attacks
Over the past week Linux creator Linus Torvalds has been active on a Linux kernel mailing list thread around avoiding barrier_nospec() in copy_from_user() due to being 'overkill and painfully slow.' The conversation evolved into low-level discussions over CPU behavior and how to best handle, differing behavior/requirements with new Intel CPUs supporting Linear Address Masking (LAM), and the overall headaches these days around CPU security mitigations.
Honestly, I'm pretty damn fed up with buggy hardware and completely theoretical attacks that have never actually shown themselves to be used in practice. So I think this time we push back on the hardware people and tell them it's *THEIR* damn problem, and if they can't even be bothered to say yay-or-nay, we just sit tight. Long story short, Linus Torvalds is not happy with buggy hardware and the ever increasing CPU security issues with their chaotic state particularly around theoretical vs. practical attacks.About The AuthorMichael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience.
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