New Intel Security Flaw Fix Could Slow All Intel CPU''s Up To 30 Percent

[PEB]

Well AMD the performance king now it seems.

"Millions of computers using Intel chips are prone to hacking thanks to a flaw that went unnoticed for a decade, it has emerged.

Software giants are currently working on a fix for that flaw but industry experts have warned it could potentially slow down all devices running the chips by up to 30 per cent.

The flaw could allow hackers a ""persistent and undetectable backdoor into someone's computer," Mike Godfrey, cyber expert at Insinia Security told the Telegraph. "

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technolo...intel-chip-flaw-will-slow-millions-computers/

 

[God_Emperor_Of_Mankind]

Is that the end of Intel? 10 years, damn.

 

[jefferz]

The 5%-30% seems to have been from a Linux test.

We don’t know how much this will affect day-to-day PC use yet. Dave Hansen, a Linux kernel developer who works at Intel, wrote that the changes being made in the Linux kernel will affect everything. According to him, most workloads are seeing a single digit slowdown, with a roughly 5% slowdown being typical. The worst case scenario was a 30% slowdown on a networking test, though, so it varies from task to task. The fix slows down system calls, so tasks with a lot of system calls, such as compiling software and running virtual machines, will likely slow down the most. But every piece of software uses some system calls.

These are numbers for Linux, so they may not apply to Windows at all. The changes being made to Windows may be different, and we may see less (or more) of a performance hit. How much this will actually end up noticeable in normal day-to-day computer use is still unclear.

https://www.howtogeek.com/338269/a-huge-intel-security-hole-could-slow-down-your-pc-soon/

 

[PEB]

The 5%-30% seems to have been from a Linux test.


https://www.howtogeek.com/338269/a-huge-intel-security-hole-could-slow-down-your-pc-soon/

No one really letting on what will be effected by how much but still not good.

 

[KidBaize]

Wow, not good at all. I wonder how long it will be for a patch. I run script blocking addons on my browser so hopefully I haven't been infected.

 

[PEB]

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bl...ter-rival-intel-said-to-reveal-processor-flaw

On Tuesday, the technology website The Register said a bug lets some software gain access to parts of a computer’s memory that are set aside to protect things like passwords. All computers with Intel chips from the past 10 years appear to be affected, the report said, and patches to Microsoft Corp.’s Windows and Apple Inc.’s OS X operating systems will be required. The security updates may slow down older machinery by as much as 30 percent, according to The Register.

 

[jefferz]

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bl...ter-rival-intel-said-to-reveal-processor-flaw

On Tuesday, the technology website The Register said a bug lets some software gain access to parts of a computer’s memory that are set aside to protect things like passwords. All computers with Intel chips from the past 10 years appear to be affected, the report said, and patches to Microsoft Corp.’s Windows and Apple Inc.’s OS X operating systems will be required. The security updates may slow down older machinery by as much as 30 percent, according to The Register.

It appears ARM is affected as well
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-bug-performance-loss-windows,36208.html

From the link above.

A note of caution: The bug will have an impact on some programs, but the chance of a widespread 30% reduction in performance is slim. Phoronix conducted testing on the patched Linux 4.15-rc6 kernel with an Intel Core i7-6800K and an i7-8700K. It tested applications that are confined to the user space, which are typically indicative of what you would see on a desktop system, and found that these applications "should see minimal change (if any) in performance." That means you will likely see little to no performance impact on your next desktop session, be it gaming or otherwise.

Phoronix did record significant performance regressions with the new kernel during select workloads, particularly synthetic I/O benchmarks. The site conducted these tests with SSDs that tend to offer varying performance based on the amount of past user activity, and the article doesn't indicate if the storage devices were correctly preconditioned. Phoronix noted the new kernel has other changes beyond the bug patch that could also impact performance, so for now, it is hard to ascertain the direct impact of the patch on these workloads.

The performance impact is more pronounced in PostgreSQL, which is an open source object-relational database system. PostgreSQL has issued a warning about performance regression that includes benchmarks showing a 17-23% reduction in performance with the new patch. Redis also appears to suffer a performance loss, but to a lesser extent.

OC3D has some Linux graphs

https://overclock3d.net/news/softwa...mpacting_security_update_have_been_released/1

 

[Wariowokecancel]

Wow, not good at all. I wonder how long it will be for a patch. I run script blocking addons on my browser so hopefully I haven't been infected.

Explicit probably laughs at everything.

 

[Wariowokecancel]

It appears ARM is affected as well
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-bug-performance-loss-windows,36208.html

From the link above.



OC3D has some Linux graphs

https://overclock3d.net/news/softwa...mpacting_security_update_have_been_released/1

Well that fucks Intel in the market where it counts - servers.

Google/Facebook/Amazon are gonna be very happy.

 

[PEB]

Intel was the one who claimed it effected ARM an now AMD. AMD responded it has no effect to their chips an Intel was desperate to slow the damage. Wall Street trying to determine how damaging this will be to intel.


https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cn...s-flaw-poses-near-zero-risk-to-its-chips.html

 

[My Spot]

Little effect on gaming. The difference in Assassin's Creed: Origins was 126 FPS to 123 with an i7 7700K.

 

[PEB]

Little effect on gaming. The difference in Assassin's Creed: Origins was 126 FPS to 123 with an i7 7700K.

Does anyone have benchmark from Windows?

 

[jefferz]

Intel was the one who claimed it effected ARM an now AMD. AMD responded it has no effect to their chips an Intel was desperate to slow the damage. Wall Street trying to determine how damaging this will be to intel.


https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cn...s-flaw-poses-near-zero-risk-to-its-chips.html

When testing on AMD Ryzen but with PTI active, indeed, there is a similar performance hit to Intel. But if using a mainline kernel until that patch ends up being there, just reiterating you can boot your kernel with the "nopti" kernel parameter. Intel users can also opt for the nopti switch if they want to retain maximum performance, but it's a potential security risk. The Ryzen impact:

Ryzen tests here, and yes there is a difference. From what I can tell, I might be wrong, but all 3 are being affected by the bug but only Intel stuff is vulnerable.


The Linux gods are still treating AMD stuff as vulnerable.
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=x86-PTI-EPYC-Linux-4.15-Test


It appears there has been 2 vulnurabilities, Meltdown which only affects Intel and Spectre which affects all 3.

 

[TheRuthlessOne]

Does anyone have benchmark from Windows?

Seen some stuff from windows 10 only

I cant link them cause it was a post on reddit that I can no longer find but it looks like it doesn't affect gaming on windows 10 if thats what you are worried about

Also from what I know the patch for Windows 10 is available now and 8.1 and 7 will get patches in the next week or so

 

[jefferz]

ARM affected processors
https://developer.arm.com/support/security-update

 

[My Spot]

Seen some stuff from windows 10 only

I cant link them cause it was a post on reddit that I can no longer find but it looks like it doesn't affect gaming on windows 10 if thats what you are worried about

Also from what I know the patch for Windows 10 is available now and 8.1 and 7 will get patches in the next week or so

Yeah that thread got deleted on the PC Master Race Reddit for some reason. Here's a European site with some benchmarks showing basically no difference.

https://www.computerbase.de/2018-01/intel-cpu-pti-sicherheitsluecke/#update2

 

[PEB]

Well it's being reported the fix may not resolve all the problems for intel. No reports of impact on AMD other then continued reports of potential problems. ARM seems to be getting similar issues. The are reporting it as a performance shortcut in a Google testing report.

"
Variant 1 is software patchable and affects almost all modern processors, Variant 2 and 3 are not patchable and affect Intel and potentially ARM"


https://www.google.com/amp/s/wccftech.com/intel-affected-by-critical-kernel-bug-amd-hit/amp/

 

[Madmick]

Well that fucks Intel in the market where it counts - servers.

Google/Facebook/Amazon are gonna be very happy.

And this was already the market that was really under threat from the release of Ryzen (the EPYC wing).

This is a disaster for Intel. I'm surprised their stock didn't plunge more today.

 

[Wariowokecancel]

And this was already the market that was really under threat from the release of Ryzen (the EPYC wing).

This is a disaster for Intel. I'm surprised their stock didn't plunge more today.

Mention Bitcoin in a tweet and you go 10% up.

Admit that you just buttfucked your biggest customers over the last decade and that you may have crippled THEIR operations - 1% down. Analysts have no fucking idea what just happened.

WTF happens when FB, Google or Amazon take a 30-50% hit on server speed? From what I understand networking is particularly hard hit. Compiling is fucked. Games - zero effect.

Also seems AMD also shares issues though not so serious. ARM mobile doesn't have issues, big ARM has some issues.

 

[Wariowokecancel]

Nice write up:

https://www.wired.com/story/critical-intel-flaw-breaks-basic-security-for-most-computers/

"Although both attacks are based on the same general principle, Meltdown allows malicious programs to gain access to higher-privileged parts of a computer's memory, while Spectre steals data from the memory of other applications running on a machine. And while the researchers say that Meltdown is limited to Intel chips, they say that they've verified Spectre attacks on AMD and ARM processors, as well."