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operating-systems.html: add a warning for Linux/CPU vulns #1231

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Mikaela merged 14 commits from cpu-vulns into master 2019-08-31 17:05:37 +00:00
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@ -41,6 +41,33 @@ tor="http://sejnfjrq6szgca7v.onion"
<li><a href="#win10"><i class="fas fa-link"></i> Don't use Windows 10 - It's a privacy nightmare</a></li>
</ul>
<h4 id="cpuvulns">Remember to check CPU vulnerability mitigations</h4>
<p><em><a href="https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4073757/protect-windows-devices-from-speculative-execution-side-channel-attack">This also affects Windows 10</a>, but it doesn't expose this information or mitigation instructions as easily. MacOS users check <a href="https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210108">How to enable full mitigation for Microarchitectural Data Sampling (MDS) vulnerabilities on Apple Support</a>.</em></p>
<p>When running a enough recent kernel, you can check the CPU vulnerabilities it detects by <code>tail -n +1 /sys/devices/system/cpu/vulnerabilities/*</code>. By using <code>tail -n +1</code> instead of <code>cat</code>, the file names are also visible.</p>
<p>
In case you have an Intel CPU, you may notice "SMT vulnerable" display after running the <code>tail</code> command. To mitigate this, disable <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyper-threading">hyper-threading</a> from the UEFI/BIOS. You can also take the following mitigation steps below if your system/distribution uses GRUB and supports <code>/etc/default/grub.d/</code>:
</p>
<ol>
<li><code>sudo mkdir /etc/default/grub.d/</code> to create a directory for additional grub configuration</li>
<li><code>echo GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="$GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT mds=full,nosmt" | sudo tee /etc/default/grub.d/mds.conf</code> to create a new grub config file source with the echoed content</li>
<li><code>sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg</code> to generate a new grub config file including this new kernel boot flag</li>
<li><code>sudo reboot</code> to reboot</li>
Mikaela commented 2019-08-30 10:37:50 +00:00 (Migrated from github.com)
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I think it's more universal than systemctl reboot

I think it's more universal than `systemctl reboot`
<li>after the reboot, check <code>tail -n +1 /sys/devices/system/cpu/vulnerabilities/*</code> again to see that MDS now says "SMT disabled."</li>
</ol>
<h5>Further reading</h5>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://cpu.fail/">CPU.fail</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/admin-guide/hw-vuln/mds.html">MDS - Microarchitectural Data Sampling on The Linux kernel user's and administrator's guide</a></li>
<li><a href="https://mdsattacks.com/">RIDL and Fallout: MDS attacks on mdsattacks.com</a></li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simultaneous_multithreading">Simultaneous multithreading on Wikipedia</a></li>
Mikaela commented 2019-08-31 16:24:01 +00:00 (Migrated from github.com)
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I changed the earlier link 4697bf6d6c.

I changed the earlier link https://github.com/privacytoolsIO/privacytools.io/pull/1231/commits/4697bf6d6c04cb128c5d28adfc90f4c88f373113.
</ul>
<h3>Worth Mentioning</h3>
<ul>