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From: Brian Gerst <brgerst@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2018 10:37:36 -0500
Message-ID: <CAMzpN2gRtzyHZ8Pt3T55_tP+uRxe47x-OqveA7Gda4M3Lb87Gw@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] x86/cpu, x86/pti: Do not enable PTI on AMD processors
To: Pavel Machek <pavel@ucw.cz>
Cc: Tom Lendacky <thomas.lendacky@amd.com>,
        "the arch/x86 maintainers" <x86@kernel.org>,
        Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@linux.intel.com>,
        Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
        Ingo Molnar <mingo@redhat.com>, Andy Lutomirski <luto@kernel.org>,
        "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>, Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>,
        Borislav Petkov <bp@suse.de>
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On Mon, Feb 12, 2018 at 10:26 AM, Pavel Machek <pavel@ucw.cz> wrote:
> On Tue 2017-12-26 23:43:54, Tom Lendacky wrote:
>> AMD processors are not subject to the types of attacks that the kernel
>> page table isolation feature protects against.  The AMD microarchitecture
>> does not allow memory references, including speculative references, that
>> access higher privileged data when running in a lesser privileged mode
>> when that access would result in a page fault.
>>
>> Disable page table isolation by default on AMD processors by not setting
>> the X86_BUG_CPU_INSECURE feature, which controls whether X86_FEATURE_PTI
>> is set.
>
> PTI was originally meant to protect KASLR from memory leaks, before
> Spectre was public. I guess that's still valid use on AMD cpus?
>                                                                 Pavel

KASLR leaks are a much lower threat than Meltdown.  Given that no AMD
processor supports PCID, enabling PTI has a much more significant
performance impact for a much smaller benefit.  For the paranoid user
they still have the option to enable PTI at boot, but it should not be
on by default.

--
Brian Gerst