Is Linode affected by Meltdown or Spectre?

The big trio of CPU vulnerabilities everyone has been recently freaking out about, detailed by Google's legendary Project Zero team.

They're called:

  • Spectre (variants 1 and 2)

  • Meltdown (variant 3)

http://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2 … -side.html">http://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2018/01/reading-privileged-memory-with-side.html

A big rundown from Google of all their services and products affected by these vulnerabilities, including Android, Chrome, Chrome OS, cloud services, etc: https://security.googleblog.com/2018/01 … -need.html">https://security.googleblog.com/2018/01/todays-cpu-vulnerability-what-you-need.html.

Are Linode VMs protected from these? What do we need to know? I'd love a statement from the team.

Thanks.

7 Replies

This post says that Xen is affected (only?):

http://blog.cyberus-technology.de/posts … tdown.html">http://blog.cyberus-technology.de/posts/2018-01-03-meltdown.html

@linode says they will let us know:

https://twitter.com/linode/status/948704190355922944

KVM is explicitly mentioned in the original report https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/ … -side.html">https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2018/01/reading-privileged-memory-with-side.html.

Just wanted to update those following this thread that a blog post is up.

~~[https://blog.linode.com/2018/01/03/cpu-vulnerabilities-meltdown-spectre/" target="_blank">](https://blog.linode.com/2018/01/03/cpu- … n-spectre/">https://blog.linode.com/2018/01/03/cpu-vulnerabilities-meltdown-spectre/](

Any new information that we have will be updated there. If reboots are necessary for any of your Linodes, you will be contacted directly with scheduling information.

no wonder the CEO of Intel sold most of his Intel stock a month ago….

it looks like the hardware manufacturers are doing their best to avoid mass-recalls, by trying to fix a hardware flaw with a software patch.

I guess in the near future we will see new cpus for sale with marketing slogans like "hardened, secure, not affected by Meltdown/Spectre", with cool stickers on the box.

update

CentOS kernels have been released with patches for at least 2 of the 3 vulnerabilities.

update

Linode has released new custom kernels, if your Linode Profile is set to "Latest 64bit" then all you need to do is reboot and you'll get the new 4.14.11 kernel.

Reply

Please enter an answer
Tips:

You can mention users to notify them: @username

You can use Markdown to format your question. For more examples see the Markdown Cheatsheet.

> I’m a blockquote.

I’m a blockquote.

[I'm a link] (https://www.google.com)

I'm a link

**I am bold** I am bold

*I am italicized* I am italicized

Community Code of Conduct