Keynote: MDS, Fallout, Zombieland, and Linux
summary
MDS covers a family of Intel CPU speculative-execution bugs (Ridl, Fallout, Zombieland) that leak data across processes and VMs and require both update BIOS and kernel and a power cycle to be safe. Kernel fixes force flush the buffers on context switches; disabling hyper-threading removes most issues but costs real performance — about 15% in one build workflow and ~2% for others. Google audits found 218 issues and 92% were already fixed in LTS kernels, so keep kernels updated (monthly or quarterly).
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chapters (7)
- 0:00Start
- 4:16OpenBSD was right
- 6:17Fallout
- 7:17Zombieland
- 9:06Flushing CPU buffers is slow
- 12:03Linux's response
- 17:02Linux Longterm kernels Fix Problems
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