KPTI + Retpoline Linux Benchmarking On Old Laptops

[GreenReaper]

I know a Linux forum is perhaps not the best place to ask this, but people here tend to be much more technically-knowledgeable than on any Windows-centered website.

Does anyone know if there is a way to disable the exploit mitigations on Windows? Does Windows have an equivalent to "nopti noretpoline" in the Linux cmdline?

I have a Windows machine where I don't care about security. I want my performance back.

Sure, here you go (search for "To disable this fix"). It improved things for one of my artist friends who was running into major issues.

[cybertraveler]

Sure, here you go (search for "To disable this fix"). It improved things for one of my artist friends who was running into major issues.

What kind of issues? Stability? Performance? I'm curious.

[GreenReaper]

They were having trouble streaming and creating artwork while using two monitors, something they did on a regular basis before.

They didn't go into a huge amount of detail, but graphics tablet operations can involve 100-200Hz inputs with associated messaging and user/kernel transitions followed by immediate low-latency graphics operations, and of course streaming can be heavy on the CPU and GPU as well. Artists can't always update to the latest and greatest tech so it is likely that they had an older CPU without INVPCID.

They reported that applying the registry settings and rebooting resolved the problem.

[cybertraveler]

Thanks GreenReaper

[tajjada]

Sure, here you go (search for "To disable this fix"). It improved things for one of my artist friends who was running into major issues.

Thank you!!

[linuxgeex]

Privacy is a way of life, and its not just what you do with computers.

EDIT: if you never bank online and never give your bank your email address, you also know that ALL emails claiming to come from your bank are "something phishy" and not do do anything they ask you to do.

I agree wholeheartedly with these. I also understand that all security comes at the cost of some inconvenience, and that inconvenience has an actual dollar value in my personal time, and I'm prepared to spent a certain amount of money and risk a certain amount of money (risk:reward balance) even if using online banking and debit cards at merchants increases my attack surface and reduces my privacy (obviously not as much as using credit cards.)

So for example, the debit card I use is on a zero-fee "chequing" account that never has more than $200 in it unless I am making a larger purchase. When I want to make a larger purchase then I transfer the appropriate funds in a small time window to making the purchase, and so there's never more than $200 at risk. I use a VirtualBox VPS with a snapshot of a running XUbuntu 16.10 livecd, and it connects using a VPN to a Google Compute instance so even if my wifi is compromised it is safe. Each user on my host has encfs and the host disk has LVM+LUKS-Crypt. The VPS runs under a different user than my desktop user, and I view its desktop via VNC. I enter the password manually, but the VPN password and card number are in a snapshot which I restore after every session, so even if the browser is hacked it will be undone and the hacker will need to be hacking me in the time window that I'm using the banking... 2-3 minutes at most. the risk is then primarily a keylogger on the host, in my user account. I'm prepared to live with that tiny risk given how little correlation there is to the banking data, and my password looks like PHP code, which I'm entering for hours a day.

That isn't what I consider a significant attack surface risk cost vs the definitely real costs of making physical appearances at my bank, and regularly advertising to strangers that I carry cash! You have your safety priorities... I have mine. :-)