On Tue, Jan 16, 2018 at 07:40:19PM +0000, Ian Stewart wrote:
For the Wlug meeting I wondered about the idea of everyone brings along what they can remember of newspaper articles they have read in the last three months on either:
1. The CPU chip vulnerabilities 'Meltdown' and 'Spectre'. I think Lawrence might be in the best position to sort the newspaper stories in fact an C.T., and explain whats going on.
I could give a talk on Meltdown and Spectra along the lines of: - How these vulnerabilities are fundamentally different to all previous vulnerabilities. - A bit of CPU development history and architecture that answers what it is about CPUs that make them so vulnerable and some clues as to how the hell did we get to the point where we discover that modern CPUs are so vulnerable to attack. - A demonstration of a cache attack with the Spectre proof of concept code and the Meltdown exploit. - Some hints as to mitigation and what might be the best lines of defence for users of Linux. Cheers Michael.