Linux 4.9.100, Linux 4.16.9 Bring More Spectre V1 Safeguards

Written by Michael Larabel in Linux Kernel on 16 May 2018 at 12:27 PM EDT. Add A Comment
LINUX KERNEL
Greg Kroah-Hartman has today released his latest slew of stable kernel release updates.

Out today are Linux 3.18.109, Linux 4.4.132, Linux 4.9.100, Linux 4.14.41, and Linux 4.16.9.

The fixes in these stable kernel updates aren't too notable. What is common to the 4.x updates though and representing a handful of the changes are more Spectre Variant One safeguards with various arrays in the kernel. It's the stable backporting of these recent Spectre V1 fixes that days ago entered the mainline Linux 4.17 kernel. These possible safeguards for a Spectre V1 style exploit were uncovered via the Smatch static analysis tool.
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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.

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