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Bugtraq archives for 4th quarter (Oct-Dec) 1997: Re: Intel Pentium Bug

Re: Intel Pentium Bug

George Imburgia (gtiHOPI.DTCC.EDU)
Fri, 7 Nov 1997 14:49:49 -0500 

On Fri, 7 Nov 1997, Stefan Hudson wrote:

> Oh dear.  This is very not good.  Without knowing machine level programing
> as well as I should, is it possible to create a patch for the, in the Linux
> kernel for example?  Will there be a significant performance hit?

This isn't something you can fix at the OS level, it seems to be a
microcode bug.

Intel recently acknowledged that they enabled the ability to update
microcode on Pentium chips several years ago. That's right folks, they put
a backdoor in your hardware. The good news is, it could be used to fix
this bug, should Intel be so inclined.

> This code does NOT affect Cyrix 6x86 (166+ specifically, but probably all of
> them) processors.  If you run a multiuser, untrusted system, I suggest
> reserving some at your local computer supplier... unless there is an easy
> fix for this, there is going to be a run on them.
>
> I don't know if AMD's Pentium-clone chips are vulnerable.

AMD's microcode is updateable too. No clue about cyrix.

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