Re: Linux vs MS Security

From: Rick Moen (rick_at_linuxmafia.com)
Date: 09/15/05

  • Next message: Rick Moen: "Re: Protection Software for Linux" 
    Date: Wed, 14 Sep 2005 22:34:14 -0400

    Moe Trin <ibuprofin@painkiller.example.tld> wrote:

    [F00F bug:]

    >>Regardless, after the bug was publicised on 1997-11-10,
    >
    > Are you sure of the date? The original posting (above) was late on the
    > sixth, and the next few days were like someone stomped on a fire ant nest.

    No, I was actually up during the middle of the night after donating
    blood and then crashing for several hours, really had no business
    attempting to be coherent on Usenet at that time, and only partially
    succeeded. Ordinarily, I'd have properly re-found the date stamp on the
    original newsgroup posting before saying that, but I was just too tired.
    (That's a poor excuse, I know. I knew I was likely to get it slightly
    wrong, but was exhausted and momentarily didn't care. My lazy
    guesstimate about the number of months until Microsoft's NT patch was
    off, too -- but in the ballpark.)

    [Microsoft:]

    > Did they ever fix it at all?

    Now that you mention it.... Hmm, I notice that their earlier
    http://premium.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q163/8/52.asp page that
    they posted in 1998 doesn't exist, any more. Ah, here:

    http://support.microsoft.com/kb/163852/EN-US/

    I found that by googling for Intel's mind-numbing moniker for the
    problem, "Invalid Operand with Locked CMPXCHG8B Instruction". Page
    claims that NT 3.51 got some sort of hotfix, but they don't actually
    name or link that hotfix. NT 4.0 got a fix as part of SP 4.0. Win95
    _never_ got any sort of fix, it seems -- just as I was saying in '98.

    It's a bit frightening to think that I might personally have been -- for
    a while -- the best-informed commentator on this problem other than
    Robert Collins (who wasn't saying much). And I was a rank amateur. ;->

    > I know Novell didn't. My understanding was that they claimed there
    > was no need to fix it, as no compiler would produce that machine code.
    > Obviously wrong, as anyone who has ever coded ANYTHING knows (how do
    > they think it was discovered in the first place, magic?), but that was
    > their story at the time.

    Yes, that was quite bogus. Here's the actual vendor statement, from
    Intel's inforamtional page:

       "Novell's network operating system NetWare/IntranetWare is not
       affected by the invalid instruction erratum found in the Pentium
       processor. NetWare/IntranetWare requires proper authentication to run
       NLM's [sic] and applications on the server. Due to this secure
       access, NetWare/IntranetWare is not susceptible to NLM's [sic] or
       applications that would use the invalid opcode. For further
       information, please contact Novell at 1-801-861-5533 or www.novell.com."

       Tom Oldroyd
       Senior Marketing Manager
       Novell Inc. 

    -- 
Cheers,                 "Due to circumstances beyond our control, we regret to
Rick Moen               inform you that circumstances are beyond our control."
rick@linuxmafia.com                                              --Paul Benoit
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