Re: [patch 00/38] x86/retbleed: Call depth tracking mitigation

From: Sami Tolvanen
Date: Tue Jul 19 2022 - 13:21:28 EST


On Mon, Jul 18, 2022 at 05:19:13PM -0700, Joao Moreira wrote:
> > The extra instruction is likely less of a problem than the extra
> > register used.
> >
> FWIIW, per-ABI, R11 is a scratch-reg and should be usable without hard
> consequences in this scenario.

Clang always uses r11 for the indirect call with retpolines, so we'd
need to use another register. Nevertheless, splitting the constant into
two instructions would solve the call target gadget issue.

Sami