Side-channel attacks (Meltdown, Spectre)

[Alexander Boettcher]

Hi Udo,

On 05.01.2018 17:36, Udo Steinberg wrote:
> Norman Feske (NF) wrote:
> 
> NF> In contrast to monolithic kernels, a microkernel like base-hw, NOVA,
> NF> or seL4 does not deal with any user-level content like cryptographic
> NF> secrets, or the content of files. There is hardly any credential to
> NF> leak to begin with. User content stays outside the microkernel.
> 
> While it is true that a microkernel stores significantly fewer secrets than
> a monolithic kernel, like Linux, most microkernels actually have a full
> mapping of the entire physical memory in the kernel portion of each address
> space, which allows an attacker to peek anywhere into physical memory.

before starting to dig/read through all our supported kernels (I'm not
all familiar with the internals) - can you please elaborate a bit about
which microkernels, according to your knowledge, have all physical
memory mapped in the kernel ?

The currently supported microkernels for Genode are Pistachio, OKL4,
L4/Fiasco, Fiasco.OC, Nova, seL4 and our own hw kernel.

Thanks,

-- 
Alexander Boettcher
Genode Labs

http://www.genode-labs.com - http://www.genode.org

Genode Labs GmbH - Amtsgericht Dresden - HRB 28424 - Sitz Dresden
Geschäftsführer: Dr.-Ing. Norman Feske, Christian Helmuth

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