Re: [PATCH v3] Documentation: Add section about CPU vulnerabilities for Spectre

[Thomas Gleixner]

Tim,

On Mon, 17 Jun 2019, Thomas Gleixner wrote:

> Tim,
> 
> On Mon, 17 Jun 2019, Tim Chen wrote:
> 
> > +Spectre variant 1 attacks take advantage of speculative execution of
> > +conditional branches, while Spectre variant 2 attacks use speculative
> > +execution of indirect branches to leak privileged memory. See [1] [5]
> > +[7] [10] [11].
> 
> It would be great to actually link these [N] to the actual http link at the
> bottom. No idea what's the best way to do that.
> 
> Jonathan?
> 
> > +Mitigation control on the kernel command line
> > +---------------------------------------------
> > +
> > +Spectre variant 2 mitigation can be disabled or force enabled at the
> > +kernel command line.
> 
> The below renders horribly when converted to HTML
> 
> You probably want to wrap these into a table
> 
> > +	nospectre_v2	[X86] Disable all mitigations for the Spectre variant 2
> > +			(indirect branch prediction) vulnerability. System may
> > +			allow data leaks with this option, which is equivalent
> > +			to spectre_v2=off.
> > +
> > +
> > +        spectre_v2=     [X86] Control mitigation of Spectre variant 2
> > +			(indirect branch speculation) vulnerability.
> > +			The default operation protects the kernel from
> > +			user space attacks.
> 
> Maybe Jonathan has a better idea.

But ideally you follow the table style which is used for the L1TF and MDS
command line options.

Thanks,

	tglx