Re: [RFC 05/10] x86/speculation: Add basic IBRS support infrastructure

From: David Woodhouse
Date: Sun Jan 21 2018 - 10:26:25 EST



> On Sat, 20 Jan 2018, KarimAllah Ahmed wrote:
>> From: David Woodhouse <dwmw@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
>>
>> Not functional yet; just add the handling for it in the Spectre v2
>> mitigation selection, and the X86_FEATURE_IBRS flag which will control
>> the code to be added in later patches.
>>
>> Also take the #ifdef CONFIG_RETPOLINE from around the RSB-stuffing; IBRS
>> mode will want that too.
>>
>> For now we are auto-selecting IBRS on Skylake. We will probably end up
>> changing that but for now let's default to the safest option.
>>
>> XX: Do we want a microcode blacklist?
>
> Oh yes, we want a microcode blacklist. Ideally we refuse to load the
> affected microcode in the first place and if its already loaded then at
> least avoid to use the borked features.
>
> PR texts promising that Intel is committed to transparency in this matter
> are not sufficient. Intel, please provide the facts, i.e. a proper list of
> micro codes and affected SKUs, ASAP.

Perhaps we could start with the list already published by VMware at
https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/52345


--
dwmw2