I think it’s much ado about nothing.   In fact, nearly the same bug cropped up in the 386 and we had to hack around it in UNIX then (in the 32 bit pentiums you can use one of the segment registers to provide a second layer of security over paging.   Alas, this doesn’t work on the 64 bit addressing mode).

From: TUHS [mailto:tuhs-bounces@minnie.tuhs.org] On Behalf Of Andy Kosela
Sent: Wednesday, January 3, 2018 2:54 AM
To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society
Subject: [TUHS] OT: critical Intel design flaw

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/02/intel_cpu_design_flaw/

Including here as it concerns Unix kernel and leaking memory from kernel space to userland.

This is big -- it appears this is a fundamental Intel bug that exists in all x86_64 CPUs.

It will be interesting to watch the ramifications and impact of this on the industry as a whole.

--Andy