Messages in this thread | | | Date | Fri, 7 Nov 2014 18:49:17 +0100 | From | Borislav Petkov <> | Subject | Re: [PATCH 5/8] x86, microcode, intel: don't check extsig entry checksum |
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On Fri, Oct 31, 2014 at 03:14:40PM -0200, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote: > > I don't know where you come up with this but the code you're removing > > was added in 2013: > > > > e666dfa273db ("x86/microcode_intel_lib.c: Early update ucode on Intel's CPU") > > Was it? As far as I know, it is "heavily based" (i.e. copied and adapted) > on code from the regular microcode driver, and not rewritten from scrach. > > If I am correct, this really is code from 2003, changed by 11 years worth of > file renaming, file splits, and refactoring. > > It took me about 30 minutes to track the origin of this code in the regular > Intel microcode driver. As far as I can tell, it was added to version 1.12 > of the original driver, somewhere between v2.6.0-test7 and v2.6.0-test8. > > The Intel engineers credited for the original change are: Nitin Kamble > <nitin.a.kamble@intel.com> and Jun Nakajima <jun.nakajima@intel.com>. > (information from the changelog at the top of the driver source). > > You can see one of the earliest versions of the code here: > https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/history/history.git/tree/arch/i386/kernel/microcode.c?id=v2.6.0-test8 > > The extended table checksum gets calculated around line 323. The possibly > problematic logic is in line 341 and 345, and matches what the modern driver > does.
Ok so e666dfa273db only adds code so I assumed it was new.
> I am not so sure. Besides, it is entirely possible that the Intel SDM got > updated in that area after the september 2003 code drop. This is very hard > to verify outside of Intel. Or, maybe, the issue was detected internally > at Intel, and it was decided that the issue should be shelved until the day > extended microcode tables are actually required (which didn't happen yet).
Yeah, I wouldn't want to remove code from the loader without Intel people saying something first.
-- Regards/Gruss, Boris.
Sent from a fat crate under my desk. Formatting is fine. --
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