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Linux 4.14 & 4.15 Get KPTI Protection For 64-bit ARM

Written by Michael Larabel in Linux Kernel on 17 February 2018 at 09:29 AM EST. 3 Comments

Greg Kroah-Hartman released a slew of stable point releases today to supported Linux kernel series. For the 4.14 and 4.15 branches this includes Kernel Page Table Isolation (KPTI) for AArch64 hardware.

Today's Linux 4.14.20 and 4.15.4 kernels include the back-ported KPTI support after the work originally landed upstream in Linux 4.16. KPTI is for addressing the Meltdown CPU vulnerability on the ARM processors affected. KPTI is needed by 64-bit ARM SoCs except for the Broadcom Vulcan / Cavium Thunder X2 processors are white-listed. With Linux 4.16 there is also Spectre mitigation too, but that work doesn't seem to be back-ported to these current releases.

Those interested in all of the changes for these newest point releases can check out Linux 4.14.20 and Linux 4.15.4.

3 Comments

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Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.