On Tue, May 3, 2016 at 2:31 PM, Andy Lutomirski <l...@amacapital.net> wrote: > > Having actually read the erratum: how can this affect Linux at all > under any scenario where user code hasn't already completely > compromised the kernel?
If it matches purely on linear address, you will potentially have interesting situations with people running in virtualized environments and crashing programs in other virtual containers or the host. I do agree that we likely don't care all that much (especially with the lack of users in the first place). But considering that the trivial workaround is to make sure SMEP is enabled - which we want to heavily encourage anyway - I also don't think there's any real downside to just enforcing that workaround. Linus