And just after how many issues that keep popping up on intel CPUs should Microsoft/Linux just decide that enough is enough and it's easier and more secure for users to disable HT? ChromeOS has already taken that step, if another serious vulnerabily comes up, which at this point seems inevitable, then it would not surprise me if Microsoft does the same.
Just How Screwed is Intel without Hyper-Threading?
- Thread starter Steve
- Start date
And just after how many issues that keep popping up on intel CPUs should Microsoft/Linux just decide that enough is enough and it's easier and more secure for users to disable HT? ChromeOS has already taken that step, if another serious vulnerabily comes up, which at this point seems inevitable, then it would not surprise me if Microsoft does the same.
How much damage to our privacy, to our computing future will we abide before we techies demand swift, brutal action against these brutal criminals? These are not cute kids who are bored with playing video games -- they are international criminals who must not be allowed sanctuary in any country any more than we would mass killers or swindlers.
LogiGaming
Posts: 160 +141
So, why do you even bother doing an article where HT is removed? I mean you don´t need to disable HT to be secure as long as you install the security patches right? Or am I missing something here?
I feel that internet is over reacting to a flaw that was never exploited by anyone and most likely never will, home users wise. People been saying the patches reduce performance a lot, yet for my use case (gaming, audio) I didn´t lose a single fps. I think nowadays internet doesn´t miss a chance to bash Intel. I understand we are all angry about Intel prices in the last years, but we should calm down a bit. If you want pure raw performance, Intel still delivers. Just like Nvidia is expensive, but they have the performance. While people prefer to glorify AMD and their inferior products, altho with better prices, but less revolutionary performance wise.
I want Zen 2 and Navi to be good, but at the same time, I wouldn´t mind it failed hard so ppl would calm down. I have nothing against AMD; but man, AMD fans these days are too annoying. AMD had nothing for 10 years and now just because they have similar products to Haswell, they are incredible all of a sudden. Annoying.
I feel that internet is over reacting to a flaw that was never exploited by anyone and most likely never will, home users wise. People been saying the patches reduce performance a lot, yet for my use case (gaming, audio) I didn´t lose a single fps. I think nowadays internet doesn´t miss a chance to bash Intel. I understand we are all angry about Intel prices in the last years, but we should calm down a bit. If you want pure raw performance, Intel still delivers. Just like Nvidia is expensive, but they have the performance. While people prefer to glorify AMD and their inferior products, altho with better prices, but less revolutionary performance wise.
I want Zen 2 and Navi to be good, but at the same time, I wouldn´t mind it failed hard so ppl would calm down. I have nothing against AMD; but man, AMD fans these days are too annoying. AMD had nothing for 10 years and now just because they have similar products to Haswell, they are incredible all of a sudden. Annoying.
Alex1105
Posts: 29 +21
Bla bla intel bla bla...guess some ppl got paid to develop and post whatever exploits they find for intel processors, and then test them to see if it's the same for amd. From a logical standpoint, if you develop an exploit specifically for some type of CPU, it's almost normal that it won't be the same for the other one. But if they would be paid to do the same for amd, perhaps they will find some exploits there aswell.
What confidential data can anybody leak from this ? most cpu's have an almost unimaginable ipc count. Good luck trying to find anything there in all that data; and how will you acomplish this if the computer is behind a router with closed ports and a hardware firewall, or if it's a network node with hundreds of computers?
What confidential data can anybody leak from this ? most cpu's have an almost unimaginable ipc count. Good luck trying to find anything there in all that data; and how will you acomplish this if the computer is behind a router with closed ports and a hardware firewall, or if it's a network node with hundreds of computers?
Axiarus
Posts: 631 +427
I like to see all the Intel fan lovers XD.... Whatever get a good antivirus why do you have to care about those stupid vulnerabilities?
Antivirus software has only limited effectiveness mostly against widely known malware and itself is a possible door to the system, since it's running at system level privileges and has vulnerabilities of it's own (for example this one https://bugs.chromium.org/p/project-zero/issues/detail?id=1252&desc=5).
Just wait for exploits of various AV soft using those hardware vulnerabilities to come out to light.
ChristopherB
Posts: 32 +27
Yes an intel shareholder employee posting this on a R7 1700X system. That's funny. I see you failed to educate yourself on this exploit and the others. Go research what it actually takes to successfully get useful data from these exploits. For home PC users its nothing to worry about. Nobody is going to take the time and effort to get the data off a home PC using this exploit.
I'm saying that if a home user avoided the OS patches and BIOS updates, 99.9999% of the time they would not have to worry about this exploit or similar ones affecting them. THe OS patches are basically forced on home users with OS updates.
The amount of effort and time it takes to use the above mentioned exploit and similar ones doesn't make it worth it for home users to worry about it. Due to the time and effort required to get any meaningful data from the exploit, and similar ones, its not worth even attempting it unless you are doing it to get data from a large business as I mentioned before. In almost all cases its actually easier to break into a home or small business and steal the PC or laptop to get data from or use social engineering to get access to the data than it is to use this exploit.
This article made me wince all the way through it. Awhile back I upgraded my system, motherboard, cpu, ram, video card. I went up from a GTX 770 to a GTX 1070, and from a I7 3770k to an I5 8600k. I have regretted the cpu choice ever since. Video game improvement was very nice and noticeable but that's where it stopped. In just about everything else I do, I now have a decrease in performance than I did with the I7 3770k. It's all in the hyper threading. Winrar, or converting a video and even copying files from one drive to another are all noticeably slower since my upgrade. Even stuff like having a video displaying in a player and then doing something else on the screen. I notice lag now in situations that I had never before. Makes me want to bite bullet and buy an I7 8700 just to get my hyper threading back and chalk it down to an expensive learning experience. I never realized how much affect it had on my daily computing until I made this change. This article told me what I had been suspecting for awhile now.
Evernessince
Posts: 5,469 +6,158
FYI there are plenty of ways to deliver malware beside Javascript. And mind you, a few days is likely the most optimistic outlook on a security fix I've ever seen. Fixes rarely come that quickly.
Evernessince
Posts: 5,469 +6,158
No, none of the other Intel vulnerabilities require physical access to the machine nor do they require administrator privileges to execute.
Try it for yourself: https://www.grc.com/inspectre.htm
And GamersNexus did an interview with a leading computer researcher studying the vulnerabilities, here's what they said
"“Neither Spectre or Meltdown require physical access. They are purely software, that just utilize how hardware works.”"
"Other timing attacks has been shown to be launchable over the network even without javascript."
https://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/...tdown-and-spectre-discoverers-one-month-later
This information has been out there for months now. I really wish people would look these things up before posting inaccurate comments.
The only vulnerabilities that required physical access are the 3 AMD ones that were found and it's the reason they aren't a big deal. They were extremely difficult to exploit and chipset dependent.
Evernessince
Posts: 5,469 +6,158
I directly quoted one of the researchers who helped discover the vulnerabilities. I'm going to re quote them here for posterity
“Neither Spectre or Meltdown require physical access. They are purely software, that just utilize how hardware works.”"
"Other timing attacks has been shown to be launchable over the network even without javascript."
https://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/...tdown-and-spectre-discoverers-one-month-later
There isn't any ambiguity in these statements, not only can the attacks be launched remotely with something as simple as Javescript, there are multiple remote attack vectors.
How about this, you actually quote the part of the white paper that you are referring to. I've backed up my argument yet you have not.
Evernessince
Posts: 5,469 +6,158
Exactly as I thought, you can't quote what doesn't exist.
That which is admitted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
I'll link it here since you are clearly unwilling.
https://meltdownattack.com/meltdown.pdf
"In this paper, we presented Meltdown, a novel software-based attack exploiting out-of-order execution and sidechannels on modern processors to read arbitrary ker-nel memory from an unprivileged user space program."
Which means that any attack vector that delivers software to execute code on your machine can execute an attack. This could be anything from viewing an infected image with malicious code stored in the metadata to a script running on the page.
FYI I wasn't quoting GamersNexus, I was quoting the security researcher.
Evernessince
Posts: 5,469 +6,158
Evernessince
Posts: 5,469 +6,158
The ironic part being that you recommended people read the white paper, when in fact you didn't read the comments nor the white paper.
Irony, I'm out.
Itanium has one or two other slight problems. I have 2500k, 8600k and an n3450 none of which have HT .. so I'm only down by 10-15%, whoopee!. how much discount will Intel have to give big buyers to stop them defecting to AMD...big hit to profits on CPUs. is HT dead for ever? will physical cores rule the roost ... watch ths space ....
Sounds like time for a Class Action
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