AMD buffer overflow protection and Linux

Vincent pros-n-cons at bak.rr.com
Tue Feb 24 03:52:07 UTC 2004


On Mon, 23 Feb 2004 21:29:15 -0500
James Drabb <JDrabb at tampabay.rr.com> wrote:

> Has anyone hear about this:
> http://tinyurl.com/zllg
> 
> What about support for Linux?  This could come in very handy and I
> certainly do not want to see this as some MS only feature  : (

It will work on linux just fine. I beleive this is a 'patch' for 386 that
all other arch's and kernels have supported forever, AMD and Intel are behind here.
but once its put in the hardware using it is trivial. for IA-32 and AMD-32 there
is software workarounds like exec-shield, mprotect(), pax, propolice and SElinux
using a type of jail to contain the problem. So not only is linux going to have it
but its going to do better AFIK.
> 
> One quote from the article:
> 
> Sunnyvale, Calif.-based AMD says it has included code in all its 64-bit
> Athlon and Opteron-brand processors that Microsoft soon plans to use to
> make it far more difficult for hackers to exploit buffer overflows --
> one of the most widespread computer security holes.
> 
> It sounds like this code is already there.  Any support in Linux yet? 
> It would be nice if this support was in Linux first : )
> 
> Jim Drabb

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://listman.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/attachments/20040223/3f387e13/attachment-0001.sig>


More information about the fedora-list mailing list