From: Andy Wingo <wingo@igalia.com>
To: Leah Rowe <info@gluglug.org.uk>
Cc: guix-devel@gnu.org
Subject: Re: What do Meltdown and Spectre mean for libreboot x200 user?
Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2018 14:25:41 +0100 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <87lggzb6ei.fsf@igalia.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <6e931622-65fc-fe0b-491f-3e94c6acdf0b@gluglug.org.uk> (Leah Rowe's message of "Mon, 15 Jan 2018 11:32:40 +0000")
Greets,
On Mon 15 Jan 2018 12:32, Leah Rowe <info@gluglug.org.uk> writes:
> The implications [of Meltdown/Spectre] at firmware level are
> non-existent (for instance, these attacks can't, to my knowledge, be
> used to actually run/modify malicious code, just read memory, so it's
> not as if some evil site could install malicious boot firmware in your
> system).
I agree that it's unlikely that a site could install boot firmware, but
AFAIU it's not out of the realm of possibility. The vector I see would
be using Meltdown/Spectre to read authentication/capability tokens which
could be used to gain access, either via some other RCE vuln or possibly
via remote access. Maybe evil code could find an SSH private key in a
mapped page, for example, which the evil server could use to SSH
directly to your machine. But I admit that it's a bit farfetched :)
Andy
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2018-01-15 13:26 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 8+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2018-01-10 8:56 What do Meltdown and Spectre mean for libreboot x200 user? Leah Rowe
2018-01-14 15:17 ` Alex Vong
2018-01-15 11:32 ` Leah Rowe
2018-01-15 13:25 ` Andy Wingo [this message]
2018-01-19 14:26 ` Leah Rowe
2018-01-19 14:29 ` Leah Rowe
-- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2018-01-06 13:20 Alex Vong
2018-01-06 17:23 ` Mark H Weaver
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