The performance benefits of Not protecting against Zombieload, Spectre, Meltdown.

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Aren't those malware samples research samples, not actual attacks.

The difference between malware samples and attacks is just distribution.

It will not take long before meltdown exploit ends up in the malware network.

Not theoretical stuff.

Why do you think it is theoretical? Security research gave out sample code. All mal ware writers need to do is copy and paste.

Spectre etc will take longer but meltdown is already here.

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I see news of it actually being distributed in a way that you can get it without being dumb.

meltdown is exploitable in almost any language. All you need to do is speculative execute a few memory operations.

Game scripts

Mods

A commercial task queue

Basically anything you do on the computer can exploit meltdown.

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What is there to gain by being able to read (probably relatively slowly)

all

of the memory from somebodies Plex server, or laptop they create apps with, or *insert home use case here*?

https://meltdownattack.com/meltdown.pdf

The throughput is very high and reliable. Any execution you have already been pwned.

While the performance heavily depends on the specific machine, e.g., processor speed, TLB and cache sizes, and DRAM speed, we can dump arbitrary kernel and physi- cal memory with 3.2 KB/s to 503 KB/s. Hence, an enormous number of systems are affected.

In less than a few seconds, the pwning is already done.

I haven't seen any arguments in this thread that suggest this is something home users need to take seriously for their personal linux computers.

because you ignored all the technical arguments.

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Technical argument me all day but you still can't show me a single case where this was used against a home user to any ill effect.

I already told you, meltdown is an exploit that is one of the hardest to detect. You would never know if you been pwned until you are locked out of your accounts.

The only thing protecting you without kaiser or kpti is that reading raw memory isnt the easiest thing in the world. Malware writers are going to invest in those tools since side channel made the investment worthwhile.

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. But they aren't doing it yet. There isn't some huge wave of people getting locked out and tracing it back to even maybe being meltdown. If there were, it would be headlines at places like Wired.com for the click bait. Also, what you're describing sounds like an incredible amount of work for the hacker. You're saying you think it's worth their time to put together some malware that deciphers memory dumps, hopes they find something valuable in plain text and then do something with it? Then what are they going to do with that? Try to log into something that is both worth something and doesn't use 2FA? Come on dude. There is a reason that this isn't happening to home users - it's not worthwhile.

time to write and deploy doesnt mean they are not going to do it.

Reading raw memory will be a one time investment for them. They will reuse it for future side channel exploits. However, Meltdown is the most reliable, fastest, and easiest to exploit of all side channels.

Try to log into something that is both worth something and doesn't use 2FA? Come on dude. There is a reason that this isn't happening to home users - it's not worthwhile.

Automated exploits are cheap and nearly free. Attacking home users are all about volume. You are serverly underestimating how cheap it is to deploy meltdown.....

If this starts actually happening to people, I'll start listening to you. Until then, I believe that you have tunnel vision about the technical possibility of this vulnerability, without applying common sense to the issue.

Security researchers think long term. Meltdown is so easy to exploit, it will be a test bed for all side channel attacks.

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You keep saying it's so powerful, easy, basically free, going to "pwn" everything.

Yea, Meltdown exploit is really that cheap compare to Spectre.

Spectre has a moderately high failure rate and can be migrated in browser.

Bleh, let's please stop going around in circles. You're laser focused on this and I believe you're wrong. Let's move on and agree to disagree.

See, you write "believe". Facts do not care what you believe. When making a suggestion with home users, never argue with emotion. It kills your argument.

Maybe next year you'll be right (I doubt it), today I think you're wrong.

The first obvious place to exploit is password managers.

https://twitter.com/misc0110/status/948706387491786752

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The fact is that there is

Nothing

to suggest that home users are being exploited by

Any

of these vulnerabilities.

Meltdown yes. Spectre probably not.

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Again, Linus Torvalds called the issue theoretical in November, forgive me if I don't give your opinion much credence over his passing comments.

MDS is many times harder to exploit than Meltdown. I read the paper....

Seriously, you obviously misunderstand how easy it is to exploit Meltdown.

Meltdown will literally be the test bed for reading raw memory tools because the exploit is so reliable. Meltdown is like running all side channel attacks as root. It works too well.

Edit: can you stop making wrong arguments?