From owner-freebsd-security@freebsd.org Thu Jan 4 16:20:20 2018 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-security@mailman.ysv.freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:1900:2254:206a::19:1]) by mailman.ysv.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2CF0EEC0E9C for ; Thu, 4 Jan 2018 16:20:20 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from eric@metricspace.net) Received: from mail.metricspace.net (mail.metricspace.net [IPv6:2001:470:1f11:617::107]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 079B2719C4 for ; Thu, 4 Jan 2018 16:20:20 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from eric@metricspace.net) Received: from [192.168.43.57] (mobile-166-171-187-140.mycingular.net [166.171.187.140]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 (128/128 bits)) (Client did not present a certificate) (Authenticated sender: eric) by mail.metricspace.net (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 6329A85BA; Thu, 4 Jan 2018 16:20:19 +0000 (UTC) Subject: Re: Potential band-aid for Meltdown To: Mike Tancsa , "freebsd-security@freebsd.org" References: <30300a34-d0d9-efbf-c9b3-6375703f65a0@metricspace.net> <599c8fe0-3745-2fa8-4bd6-d89f061f29f4@sentex.net> From: Eric McCorkle Message-ID: Date: Thu, 4 Jan 2018 11:20:18 -0500 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; FreeBSD amd64; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/52.5.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <599c8fe0-3745-2fa8-4bd6-d89f061f29f4@sentex.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Language: en-US Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-BeenThere: freebsd-security@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.25 Precedence: list List-Id: "Security issues \[members-only posting\]" List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 04 Jan 2018 16:20:20 -0000 On 01/04/2018 10:58, Mike Tancsa wrote: > On 1/4/2018 10:27 AM, Eric McCorkle wrote: >> I was thinking over meltdown mitigations this morning, and a thought >> occurred to me (which falls in line with general ideas I've been pursuing) > > A pretty neat idea. But in terms of keeping crypto keys safe, why not > something behind a pkcs11 interface (e.g. eToken) or tpm ? If you have them (and trust the vendors), sure. My thinking here is for folks with laptops or commodity hardware, who want some measure of security while waiting for fixed hardware to come out.