Re: What do Meltdown and Spectre mean for libreboot x200 user?

[Andy Wingo <wingo@igalia.com>]

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