linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 02/13] x86/microcode: Use own MSR accessors

lists.openwall.net		lists / announce owl-users owl-dev john-users john-dev passwdqc-users yescrypt popa3d-users / oss-security kernel-hardening musl sabotage tlsify passwords / crypt-dev xvendor / Bugtraq Full-Disclosure linux-kernel linux-netdev linux-ext4 linux-hardening linux-cve-announce PHC
Open Source and information security mailing list archives

Hash Suite: Windows password security audit tool. GUI, reports in PDF.

[<prev] [next>] [<thread-prev] [thread-next>] [day] [month] [year] [list]

Date:   Tue, 17 Jan 2017 19:11:20 +0100
From:   Borislav Petkov <bp@...en8.de>
To:     Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>
Cc:     X86 ML <x86@...nel.org>, LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 02/13] x86/microcode: Use own MSR accessors

On Tue, Jan 17, 2017 at 06:51:06PM +0100, Thomas Gleixner wrote:
> That would get rid of all the extra microcode specific MSR accessors which
> are just yet another copy of stuff in msr.h.

Well, I did think about reusing those but last time I did, they received
those tracepoints (apparently, we're sprinkling dumb tracepoints left
and right because good ol' staring at the code is just too hard) which
simply doesn't work on 32-bit before paging is enabled.

Then, __native_write_msr_notrace() has exception handling which doesn't
work before paging has been enabled on 32-bit - this is when the 32-bit
microcode update path happens due to paging hardware bugs in CPUs which
are fixed in microcode. So we must run that early on 32-bit.

So before someone decides to add more "functionality" to the generic MSR
accessors and break the microcode loader once more, I'd really really
prefer to have private accessors. They're small enough so shouldn't be
that much of a bloat.

Thanks.

-- 
Regards/Gruss,
    Boris.

Good mailing practices for 400: avoid top-posting and trim the reply.