>
> EGADS! Is there NO security on the processor microcode? Could this be
> exploited to do evil narsty things?
>
> In a serious note (microcode viruses aside), I don't think that I or many
> other people even knew that Intel's microcode was changeable. I wonder
> what the security implications could be?
>
> Does Linux protect the cpu at all in this instance?
Calm down. Imho, nobody (not even OS vendors) know or care what is in those
"microcode fixes". Intel gives everybody a binary "blob" and OS puts it
where needed. Of course, anyone can use it to his advantage, e.g. putting
the blobe only in OS release > X.Y and thus forcing customers to use that
release (or risk missing something very important in those "blobs") or say
"such and such OS has this blob and Linux does not, so...". The interesting
dilema is whether these blobs can go into the official kernel or not. Since
there would be no such thing as "source"; for the microcode itself *is* a
source so applying GPL to it is like multiplying a vector with identity matrix?
Regards,
T.
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