Re: [PATCH 2/2] x86/speculation: Provide application property based STIBP protection

[Jon Masters]

On 9/19/18 5:35 PM, Tim Chen wrote:
> This patch provides an application property based spectre_v2
> protection with STIBP against attack from another app from
> a sibling hyper-thread.  For security sensitive non-dumpable
> app, STIBP will be turned on before switching to it for Intel
> processors vulnerable to spectre_v2.

A general comment. I think in practice this will be similar to the
speculative store buffer bypass (aka "variant 4") issue in terms of
opt-in mitigation. Many users won't want to take the performance hit of
having STIBP by default for peer threads. We should make sure that we
don't force users into a mitigation but retain an option. Whether it's
default-on or not can be debated, though I think the vendors lean toward
having default-off with an opt-in, and customers will probably agree. So
anyway, I encourage a pragmatic approach similar to that for SSBD.

Jon.

-- 
Computer Architect | Sent with my Fedora powered laptop