If you're going to buy a new PC, wait - or buy AMD (big Intel bug found)

[Orangutan]

This site is highly ranked by the search engines, and your title is shown all over the internet, so yes, it matters because it will be around the internet for a long time, and non cr readers will see the title and not read thru the many pages of posts to find one small sentence that says ignore the title.

1. No one should take definitive computer advice from CR.

2. The coverage here will be overwhelmed by coverage in larger news media and trade publications

3. The claim of persistence is trivially true for any news/social media site.

4. The post title was legitimate for the time. If it proved to be completely false then it would merit a deletion/edit, but it hasn't. I see nothing wrong with what OP posted in this thread, and I'm completely befuddled by the negative response.

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

I see nothing wrong with what OP posted in this thread, and I'm completely befuddled by the negative response.

;D

 

[Jack Douglas]

I see nothing wrong with what OP posted in this thread, and I'm completely befuddled by the negative response.

;D

Over reaction I think, from different points of view and more like a tempest in a tea pot (not the fact of a bug; that is what it is). The thread gets one thinking and hopefully ultimately informed.

Jack

 

[YuengLinger]

If you are going to buy a new camera wait - or buy Sony (big Canon bug found)

Silly season.

Sigh...

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

If you are going to buy a new camera wait - or buy Sony (big Canon bug found)

Silly season.

Sigh...

Check out reviews on products at Amazon. Look at the lowest rating comments. There will always be a "Don't Buy This" comment from someone who had a issue. Even if there are hundreds of thousands of sales and a handful of bad reviews.

 

[Valvebounce]

Re: If you're going to buy a new PC, wait all processors affected!

Hi Folks.
All this tooing and froing about the title and no one thought to edit it? Yes I know I have only changed my reply header and any replies to this post. I believe the OP can change the main title if they desire?
Thanks to OP for bringing it to my attention.
Thanks to Mt Spokane for drawing my attention to a very interesting (and somewhat scary) read about hacked cars.

Cheers, Graham.

 

[LDS]

Re: If you're going to buy a new PC, wait all processors affected!

All this tooing and froing about the title and no one thought to edit it? Yes I know I have only changed my reply header and any replies to this post. I believe the OP can change the main title if they desire?

I didn't change the title because it could have looked a new thread, and replies titles wouldn't have changed, I guess.

I guess Intel has more to fear than this thread - AFAIK all the main news about Intel didn't change their article titles later, so that's going to haunt it for a while. Hope people don't trust a title only, but actually read what's written.

 

[Valvebounce]

Re: If you're going to buy a new PC, wait all processors affected!

Hi LDS.
Like you I’m not sure the title really makes a great deal of difference now, I’m sure the damage done by your title will pale in to insignificance compared to what the major news media will cause, an unfortunate consequence of an evolving situation.
I’m sure very few people (if any) would come here first looking for software / hardware security advice. I’m willing to take security advice from this site as I’m already here and feel I have a handle on the trustworthiness of the info available. plus I read the whole thread!

Cheers, Graham.

All this tooing and froing about the title and no one thought to edit it? Yes I know I have only changed my reply header and any replies to this post. I believe the OP can change the main title if they desire?

I didn't change the title because it could have looked a new thread, and replies titles wouldn't have changed, I guess.

I guess Intel has more to fear than this thread - AFAIK all the main news about Intel didn't change their article titles later, so that's going to haunt it for a while. Hope people don't trust a title only, but actually read what's written.

 

[midluk]

FYI: Fix for Linux already exists and behaves the same way (slower kernel calls) on Intel and also on AMD CPU. Thus using AMD CPU is not the solution to avoid slowing down the system.

There is not one fix for Linux but currently every distribution has some slightly different workarounds in their kernels. The first fix for Meltdown in the upstream kernel was indeed for all CPUs but has since been disabled again for AMD CPUs.
Then of course there are workarounds for Spectre which also affect AMD, but those are mostly still work in progress and there even more chaos exists between different Linux distributions.

Before anything can be said about performance impact, we should wait a month or two until all (or most) workarounds are in place.

 

[Luds34]

FYI: Fix for Linux already exists and behaves the same way (slower kernel calls) on Intel and also on AMD CPU. Thus using AMD CPU is not the solution to avoid slowing down the system.

I don't believe that is true. All the patches we are seeing are for Meltdown (which affects Intel, but not AMD. Sceptre is much more difficult to deal with). The fix/workaround is to segment the kernel memory, which is leading to the performance hit for system calls. I believe the code changes on the Linux kernel are checking the CPU and only applying the segmentation/isolation of the kernel memory on the affected CPUs. In fact, I believe it was an AMD engineer that had "too detailed" of comments in a check-in to the kernel that made this exploit public knowledge.

 

[ethanz]

And here I am still on OSX 10.10 not wanting to update but if I want this patch I'm sure Apple would only make it for 10.12 or whatever the newest version is.

 

[privatebydesign]

And here I am still on OSX 10.10 not wanting to update but if I want this patch I'm sure Apple would only make it for 10.12 or whatever the newest version is.

That’s not true, Apple regularly make security updates for older OS’s.

 

[Talys]

Apparently, the Spectre fix in Windows is now turning some AMD machines into toasters, with the only fix to reinstall Windows and not applying the Spectre fix (which makes Windows AMD machines vulnerable to Spectre).

https://www.neowin.net/news/microsofts-spectre-fix-is-apparently-bricking-some-amd-pcs

From Microsoft:

Microsoft has reports of customers with some AMD devices getting into an unbootable state after installing recent Windows operating system security updates. After investigating, Microsoft has determined that some AMD chipsets do not conform to the documentation previously provided to Microsoft to develop the Windows operating system mitigations to protect against the chipset vulnerabilities known as Spectre and Meltdown. To prevent AMD customers from getting into an unbootable state, Microsoft will temporarily pause sending the following Windows operating system updates to devices with impacted AMD processors at this time.

@Luds34 - The Windows fix and the UEFI update to Surface devices (and similar updates to other hardware) mitigates vulnerability to both Spectre and Meltdown. I believe Apple patched one of them prior to general publication, and now has a patch for the other -- but I'm not an Apple guy, so I only skim read security bulletins related to OSX and iOS.

 

[Luds34]

Apparently, the Spectre fix in Windows is now turning some AMD machines into toasters, with the only fix to reinstall Windows and not applying the Spectre fix (which makes Windows AMD machines vulnerable to Spectre).

https://www.neowin.net/news/microsofts-spectre-fix-is-apparently-bricking-some-amd-pcs

From Microsoft:

Microsoft has reports of customers with some AMD devices getting into an unbootable state after installing recent Windows operating system security updates. After investigating, Microsoft has determined that some AMD chipsets do not conform to the documentation previously provided to Microsoft to develop the Windows operating system mitigations to protect against the chipset vulnerabilities known as Spectre and Meltdown. To prevent AMD customers from getting into an unbootable state, Microsoft will temporarily pause sending the following Windows operating system updates to devices with impacted AMD processors at this time.

@Luds34 - The Windows fix and the UEFI update to Surface devices (and similar updates to other hardware) mitigates vulnerability to both Spectre and Meltdown. I believe Apple patched one of them prior to general publication, and now has a patch for the other -- but I'm not an Apple guy, so I only skim read security bulletins related to OSX and iOS.

Haha, yes I saw that. In fairness though, it appears to be some pretty old AMD chips, like Athlon 64 X2 and such, pre Ryzon, FX, Phenom, etc. With photography equpiment being as expensive as it is, I somehow doubt folks on here are using computer chips from 10+ years ago (amateur or pro) to post process.

Yes, you are correct there are patches being released for Spectre. I was over simplifying because while Meltdown is very specific and can be worked around and the fixes are rolling out, Spectre is a more general tactic which affects a lot of systems in various manners, many not yet found (aka any patches you are seeing are not fully inclusive for all possible Sceptre vulnerabilities). For example, there is a risk of a Spectre type attack occurring in the javascript engine, where one website could execute malicious javascript and read sensitive data from another browser that is opened at the same time. The defense is to (at least in chrome) turn on a setting that runs each website in it's own process.

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

Microsoft: No more Windows patches at all if your AV clashes with our Meltdown f

Now, some Antivirus software which has been making unsupported calls to the Kernel is blocking computers from booting. I'll bet more software that does this will appear.

During testing of the patches for the two attacks, Microsoft discovered some antivirus had been making "unsupported calls into Windows kernel memory" that stop a machine from booting or cause blue screen of death (BSOD) errors after the patch is applied. To avoid this issue, it introduced the new rules.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-no-more-windows-patches-at-all-if-your-av-clashes-with-our-meltdown-fix/

 

[9VIII]

At this point I’m basicallly just going to wait for 2020 to shop for a new CPU.
Thankfully I already have some decent systems, but if I only had an older CPU right now I would be mad.

Looks like it’s going to be a while before Spectre can actually be dealt with properly.

 

[jolyonralph]

And now even GPUs are affected!

https://www.engadget.com/2018/01/10/nvidia-gpu-meltdown-and-spectre-patches/

 

[Talys]

At this point I’m basicallly just going to wait for 2020 to shop for a new CPU.
Thankfully I already have some decent systems, but if I only had an older CPU right now I would be mad.

Looks like it’s going to be a while before Spectre can actually be dealt with properly.

I really wouldn't worry about it if you wanted to buy a new computer. If there is a difference in Photoshop or Lightroom, it's immeasurable.

On the other hand, frankly, the practical difference between a 6, 7, and 8th gen desktop i7 and between a new $300 processor and $1,500 are all relatively small for PS/LR, as long as you have plenty of RAM and SSD.

In Photoshop or Lightroom, I think I actually notice caching to m.2 SSD's more than I notice the faster CPU speed. The problem is that everything that is sluggish in a 3 year old PC is still sluggish in a brand new, 8700K with all the works, either before or after the Spectre/Meltdown fix. So things I wish happened faster (even if it's only a couple of seconds) are still that way, and frankly, I can't tell the difference between 1.9, 2.1 and 2.4 seconds (that would be generations of PCs)... they're all irritatingly slow.

And... everything else is instant.

IMHO, for PS/LR stuff, if you have a Haswell+ processor, I wouldn't bother upgrading unless you know you'll get a very specific benefit, because even though the processor is certainly faster/has more cores/etc, it isn't going to FEEL any faster. If you play demanding 3D games (or want to mine bitcoin...), you'll get more mileage out of buying a GeForce 1080 than anything.

And now even GPUs are affected!

https://www.engadget.com/2018/01/10/nvidia-gpu-meltdown-and-spectre-patches/

Sad, isn't it? But basically, anything that has speculative execution and where arbitrary code can run is probably affected to some extent :'(

 

[Mikehit]

So what does this mean for secure internet banking and other 'private' operations

If, for example, you do a virus sweep then open only your chosen browser (IE, Google, Mozilla...) then go onto your banking website will you be secure?