Re: [PATCH v2 1/7] sysfs/cpu: Add "Unknown" vulnerability state

[Greg Kroah-Hartman]

On Wed, Jan 02, 2019 at 06:49:15PM -0600, Jeremy Linton wrote:
> There is a lot of variation in the Arm ecosystem. Because of this,
> there exist possible cases where the kernel cannot authoritatively
> determine if a machine is vulnerable.

Really?  Why not?  What keeps you from "knowing" this?  Can't the
developer of the chip tell you?

> Rather than guess the vulnerability status in cases where
> the mitigation is disabled or the firmware isn't responding
> correctly, we need to display an "Unknown" state.

Shouldn't "Unknown" really be the same thing as "Vulnerable"?  A user
should treat it the same way, "Unknown" makes it feel like "maybe I can
just ignore this and hope I really am safe", which is not a good idea at
all.

thanks,

greg k-h