Hardware Security Fiasco: The Latest

• Windows 10 Cumulative Update KB4056892 (Meltdown & Spectre Fix) Fails to Install

  Microsoft rolled out Windows 10 cumulative update KB4056892 yesterday as an emergency patch for systems running the Fall Creators Update in an attempt to fix the Meltdown and Spectre bugs affecting Intel, AMD, and ARM processors manufactured in the last two decades. But as it turns out, instead of fixing the two security vulnerabilities on some computers, the cumulative update actually breaks them down, with several users complaining that their systems were rendered useless after attempting to install KB4056892. Our readers pointed me to three different Microsoft Community threads (1, 2, 3) where users reported cumulative update KB4056892 issues, and in every case the problem appears to be exactly the same: AMD systems end up with a boot error before trying a rollback and failing with error 0x800f0845.

• Linus Torvalds says Intel needs to admit it has issues with CPUs

  Linux creator Linus Torvalds has had some harsh words for Intel in the course of a discussion about patches for two [sic] bugs that were found to affect most of the company's processors.

• We translated Intel's crap attempt to spin its way out of CPU security bug PR nightmare

  In the wake of The Register's report on Tuesday about the vulnerabilities affecting Intel chips, Chipzilla on Wednesday issued a press release to address the problems disclosed by Google's security researchers that afternoon. To help put Intel's claims into context, we've annotated the text. Bold is Intel's spin.

• When F00F bug hit 20 years ago, Intel reacted the same way

  A little more than 20 years ago, Intel faced a problem with its processors, though it was not as big an issue as compared to the speculative execution bugs that were revealed this week.

• Meltdown, Spectre and the Future of Secure Hardware

  Meltdown and Spectre are two different—but equally nasty—exploits in hardware. They are local, read-only exploits not known to corrupt, delete, nor modify data. For local single user laptops, such as Librem laptops, this is not as large of a threat as on shared servers—where a user on one virtual machine could access another user’s data on a separate virtual machine. As we have stated numerous times, security is a game of depth. To exploit any given layer, you go to a lower layer and you have access to everything higher in the stack.

• KPTI — the new kernel feature to mitigate “meltdown”

• Astounding coincidence: Intel's CEO liquidated all the stock he was legally permitted to sell after learning of catastrophic processor flaws

• Intel CEO sold all the stock he could after Intel learned of security bug

   

  While an Intel spokesperson told CBS Marketwatch reporter Jeremy Owens that the trades were "unrelated" to the security revelations, and Intel financial filings showed that the stock sales were previously scheduled, Krzanich scheduled those sales on October 30. That's a full five months after researchers informed Intel of the vulnerabilities. And Intel has offered no further explanation of why Krzanich abruptly sold off all the stock he was permitted to.

Fedora 28 To Work On Better VirtualBox Integration, Hardening Packages & Stronger Crypto

With more developers returning to their activities after the holidays, feature work on Fedora 28 is heating up. Recently proposed for Fedora 28 include: VirtualBox Guest Integration - This is aobut having the VirtualBox guest drivers and tools ship by default in Fedora Workstation. This is part of an effort by Red Hat for getting more of the VirtualBox drivers mainlined in the Linux kernel. Basically if all goes well this means a smoother out-of-the-box experience when running Fedora on top of Oracle VM VirtualBox. Also: ABRT team: Link to FAF directly from Fedora Packages

Games: Croteam, 25 Coolest Linux Games of 2017, Dead Ground, SteamOS

• The Talos Principle going Fusion, Croteam dropping OpenGL & Serious Sam 4 still coming

  A bit of Croteam news to start the day with and there's multiple interesting items to go over in regards to their games. I love how active Croteam are with their community, they're constantly replying to all sorts of random questions from players of their games. Thanks to this, we've been able to learn a few things about their plans. Firstly, their fantastic puzzle game The Talos Principle is going to be moving over to their newer Fusion engine, they said it will be "Hopefully very soon". The VR version is actually already on it, so that's not surprising.

• The 25 Coolest Linux Games of 2017

  The last time we compiled a list of Linux Games was approximately 10 months ago back in 2017 – The 25 Best Games for Linux and Steam Machines. Since we’re in 2018 it is only fair that we compile another list Linux gamers can refer to as they prepare to storm Steam’s (and other game services’) servers. The games are listed in no particular order; And even though some of them featured on the previous list I advise you to check that one out here before proceeding.

• Like Roguelikes? How about Tower Defense? Dead Ground merges them together

  Another night endlessly browsing for new Linux games and I came across Dead Ground [Steam], a game that blends a Roguelike with Tower Defense.

• Valve Ships Its First SteamOS Brewmaster Beta Of 2018

  While SteamOS has felt like it's just been on life-support the past year, Valve is starting off 2018 by a fairly sizable SteamOS Brewmaster Beta update. This latest beta of their Debian-based Linux gaming OS update is mostly about bringing their packages up-to-date. This update issued on Friday upgrades to the Linux 4.14 kernel, NVIDIA 387.22 driver, and Mesa 17.2.4. These are some fairly big updates compared to their older versions although a pity Mesa 17.3 (or even 17.4-dev Git) isn't used.

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